THE HEALER
‘I believe there is a great deal to be gained by
pursuing a path of service in one’s career. Service is
as much about action as it is about mindset. Whether
you are delivering health care, managing a hotel,
working in a restaurant, or selling retail items, you
can bring a spirit of service to the work you do.’
Vice Admiral Vivek H Murthy, Surgeon General of the
United States of America, and the India Abroad
Person of the Year, speaks to Aziz Haniffa.

Presented by

VIVEK H
MURTHY

INDIA ABROAD
PERSON OF THE
YEAR 2014
For being the highest-ranking
Indian American in the
Obama administration; for his
dedication to public health;
for being America’s Doctor.

Vivek Murthy takes command as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States at a Commissioning and Change of
Command ceremony in April.
PARESH GANDHI

THE HEALER

D

ecember 15, 2014. That evening, at
6.14 pm, when United States Senator
Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West
Virginia, cast his vote, it gave Dr Vivek
Hallegere Murthy the 51st vote necessary to confirm him as the youngestever Surgeon General of the United
States of America. It was a cliff-hanger
of a vote — the final tally in the 37-year-old physician’s favor
was 51 to 43.
Not since the Indian-American community mobilized
more than six years ago to push through the US-India civilian nuclear agreement in Congress has the community coalesced in such a concerted manner to demand an up or down
vote by the Senate on President Obama’s nomination of Dr
Murthy as the first Indian-American US Surgeon General,
whose nomination had remained in limbo for over a year.
This time around — unlike the nuke deal where the first
generation in the community engaged in lobbying lawmakers to approve the US-India accord — the coalition that
came together to press the Senate to confirm Murthy included not only this generation, but the second generation of
desis and the mainstream community ranging from organized medicine to academics to Asian American groups to
leading policy wonks who prevailed upon the Senate leadership in the nick of time — before they recessed for the year
— to vote on the nomination, which they did 10 days before
Christmas.
The pro-Murthy coalition of forces mustered up the
courage to defy the pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle
Association that had threatened lawmakers not to vote for
Murthy for his tweets decrying gun violence, following the
massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown, Connecticut, which the NRA found offensive.
As much as this coalition locked arms and walked lockstep in solidarity with Murthy calling for his confirmation, it
was to the genial physician’s credit that he revealed unwavering grit and determination and fought for the position of
American’s Doctor.

When things seemed almost hopeless, with lawmakers
humming and hawing and making one excuse or another,
and not bringing the nomination to a vote, and the White
House talking about recalibrating its effort to push through
the nomination, Murthy carried the fight to the opposition,
meeting with Senators, community groups, and specialty
organizations from the American Association of Physicians
of Indian Origin to the Asian American Hotel Owners
Association, arguing why he was a perfect fit for the position.
When he was confirmed, just before the Senate adjourned
for the Christmas recess, the euphoria was palpable. Murthy
and his supporters had taken on the seemingly invincible
NRA and won, essentially by the power of their arguments.
In addition to the intense and sustained lobbying by the
Indian-American community, who flooded Senatorial offices
with e-mails and phone calls in addition to meeting personally with several lawmakers, Murthy’s nomination was supported by over 100 public health and medical organizations
including the American College of Physicians, the American
Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the
American Hospital Association, the American Cancer
Society, the American Heart Association and the American
Diabetes Association.
Explaining why he did not request President Obama to
pull his nomination when it lay in limbo for over a year
and seemed highly unlikely to be taken up once the
Republicans — who had regained the Senate in the
November election — took control in January, Murthy said,
“I was taught never to give up. I was taught to stand up for
what I believe in,” and added, “I am also
incredibly grateful for the support of President
Obama and so many people and communities
across the country who made my confirmation
possible.”
Dr Hallegere Murthy, speaking about why his
son had refused to capitulate even when at one
point it seemed hopeless, said, “More than the
position, it was the cause, and this was very
important to him. Whatever he said, it was the
right cause for the community, not only for the
4M7
United States, but around the world.”
“For saying the right thing, if someone has to

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M7

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M8

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M6
Vivek H Murthy
be persecuted or punished, we cannot sit
back and take it,” the senior Murthy said,
and declared, “So that was the determination he had — to fight the wrongful action
or the intent, rather than for the position.”
Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois was the
lone Republican who voted for Murthy,
while three Democrats in conservative red
states — apparently deathly afraid of the
NRA, as are the GOP members
beholden to it — Joe Manchin of
West Virginia, Heidi Heitcamp of
North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of
Indiana voted against the doctor.
Also voting against Murthy was
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the
founder and co-chair of the Senate
India Caucus and other high profile Republicans like Senators John
McCain — the first US lawmaker
to meet with Prime Minister
Narendra Modi — and Mitch
McConnell, who took over from
Senator Harry Reid as Senate
Majority Leader in January.
Preceding the vote, Senator
Richard Durbin, the Illinois
Democrat and the Majority Whip,
took to the Senate floor and
exhorted his colleagues not to
capitulate to the pressure and the

threats from the NRA, which had warned
that it would ‘score’ each and every
Senator vis-à-vis their vote, essentially
serving notice that if they voted for
Murthy, they would be on its ‘hit-list’ in
future political campaigns.
‘I know that the Indian-American community is very proud of Murthy’s accomplishments, as all of us should be,’ Senator
Durbin said. ‘I hope my colleagues will
join me in voting for this outstanding
nominee to be our next Surgeon General.
There’s a lot of work to do, and I can think

of no better doctor to do it.’
‘Part of what is extraordinary,’ Senator
Durbin said about Murthy — a Harvard
and Yale-educated physician, then an
attending physician at the Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and an instructor at the
Harvard Medical School — ‘is that as well
as treating his patients individually, he also
thinks about the systemic issues affecting
the health of his patients and strives to
tackle those too.’
‘He is a leading voice in public health,
publishing his research on the participation of women and minorities in
cancer clinical trials in top journals including Science, Journal
of the American Medical
Association and the Journal of
the National Cancer Institute,’
Senator Durbin noted, adding
‘Murthy also co-founded and
chairs Trial Networks, a software company that
helps clinical
researchers collaborate more effectively
and efficiently with
drug developers to
speed up drug discovery.’
Senator Durbin said
he was convinced that
‘Murthy understands
4M9
the importance of the
national crises before

PREET BHARARA (2011)
US Attorney for the Southern District of
New York
AMI BERA (2012)
US Congressman
RAJ SHAH (2012)
USAID Administrator

Vivek Murthy at an AAPI event. In addition to the intense and sustained lobbying by the Indian-American community, who flooded
Senatorial offices with e-mails and phone calls in addition to meeting personally with several lawmakers, his nomination was
supported by over 100 public health and medical organizations.
PARESH GANDHI

SRI SRINIVASAN (2013)
US Federal Judge

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M9

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M8
Vivek H Murthy
him, and feels confident that his experiences,
his training, and his tenacity have provided
him the qualifications he needs to tackle these
issues, and the many more he’s sure to face,
head-on.’
‘There’s a lot of work to do, and I can think
of no better doctor to do it,’ he said.
Murthy’s confirmation was hailed by antigun violence groups, with Americans for
Responsible Solutions, the group co-founded
by former US Congresswomen Gabby
Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who was shot
by a deranged gunman and nearly lost her
life, and her husband, astronaut, Mark Kelly.
Murthy’s confirmation was ‘long overdue,’
retired US Navy Captain Kelly, on behalf of
the group, said in a statement. ‘Tonight, the
United States Senate did the responsible
thing: It stood up to the gun lobby, stood up
for common sense, and voted to ensure that
the United States has a qualified medical
professional as its top doctor.’
Four months after he was confirmed by the
Senate when Murthy was formally sworn in
April 22 as US Surgeon General by Vice
President Joe Biden at an elaborate ceremony
with all of the pomp and pageantry replete
with an honor guard and music ensemble, at
Fort Myer in Virginia, there was plenty of reason to celebrate.
Over 500 family, friends and supporters,
including scores of Indian-American first and
second generation community activists from across the
country who prevailed on their respective Senators to confirm Murthy, were on hand for the investiture ceremony.
There was a sense of triumph after the protracted and
bruising battle with Biden remarking, ‘Thankfully, the people that held up the nomination don’t have to wait that long
for a doctor’s appointment,’ which sent the audience into
rapturous applause.
Murthy in his remarks couldn’t resist the victory lap,
when he said, ‘Even after being nominated for this job by a
President I deeply admire, I almost didn’t get to be your
Surgeon General,’ and then to loud cheers and whoops of
joy accompanied by sustained applause, acknowledged,
‘Had it not been for so many of you in this room — and
thousands of dedicated individuals that I have never even
met — I would not be standing here. We got here by standing on principle.’
‘But here’s the thing about standing on principle. You
have to remain standing,’ he added.
‘After all, if my improbable journey to this podium
demonstrates anything,’ Murthy said, ‘it’s that it took family
and friends, teachers and coaches, employers and advocates, community leaders and elected officials to get us to
this place. And that is the sort of coalition we must activate
and expand in order to fulfill our mission.’
‘Everyone in this arena — and those listening at home —
are a part of the story we write next. Each of us has a part
to play in building a stronger and healthier America,’ he
added.
If there is anyone in the community who is still unfamiliar with Murthy’s impeccable credentials and the gravitas
he brings to the Office of Surgeon General, he graduated
from Harvard magna cum laude in three years with a
bachelor’s degree in bio-chemical sciences and then went

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has President Barack Obama’s attention at a discussion on the impacts of climate
change on public health in Washington, DC in April.
ANDREW HARRER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

Much before becoming Surgeon General, Murthy had
co-founded Epernicus Inc. He brings that experience
as a techie to his new job.
EPERNICUS.COM

on to receive an MD from the Yale School of Medicine
and an MBA in health care management from the Yale
School of Management.
At the time he was nominated by President Obama, he
was a practicing physician at the Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston, as well as the hospitalist attending
physician and instructor in medicine, Harvard Medical
School.

Murthy was born in Huddersfield, United Kingdom, and
was 3 years old when his family relocated to Miami, where
his father set up a family practice.
And who better to describe what he packed in just under
four decades that would have taken others a lifetime and
then some to achieve than Health and Human Services
Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell who at the inauguration
gave Murthy the kind of endorsement one could only
dream of.
‘Vivek,’ Burwell noted, ‘has built his career across sectors
and across the world. Since he was a teenager, he has
worked to bring health care to those who need it most and
service his community.’
Burwell described him as ‘a visionary,’ and recalled how
Murthy, ‘at the age of 18, founded Visions Worldwide with
his sister, helping to promote HIV/AIDS education in the
US and India.’
‘He followed that up by founding the
Swasthya Community Health Partnership to
support rural health in India and help women
there become health providers,’ the Secretary,
HHS, added. ‘And that’s just before he graduated from college.’
He was, she pointed out, ‘an organizer — he
founded Doctors for America and has helped
promote access to quality, affordable care.’
So, is there any reason why Vice Admiral
Vivek H Murthy, Surgeon General of the
4M10
United States, should not have been the India
Abroad Person of the Year 2014, for doing us

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M10

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M9

you never for a moment gave a thought to
requesting the President to pull your nomiVivek H Murthy
nation, but fought hard for your confirmation, and, of course, there was the tons of
support from several quarters, not the least
all proud by being willing to fight and fight
of which was the Indian-American commuhard and long for a position where he could
nity. Why?
tangibly manifest his desire to serve the
I was taught never to give up — I was
American people?
taught to stand up for what I believe in.
“He has a vision,” his mother Myetraie
I am also incredibly grateful for the supMurthy said, “a bigger vision than the usual
port of President Obama and so many peogoal of getting a good job and making a
ple and communities across the country
good living and stuff like that.”
who made my confirmation possible.
He has, she added, “a vision to do someAccording to your parents, friends and
thing good for the people.”
others, you’ve always been passionate about
seva, beginning with the organization you
It’s nearly six months since you were offifounded with your sister in your teen years
cially confirmed as the first Indianto Visions Worldwide with Dr Nazleen
American US Surgeon General. How has
Bharwal and others, followed by, of course,
the ride been thus far?
Doctors for America. What has
been the driving force behind this
passion?
My inspiration to serve came
first from my parents. They dedicated themselves to serving
patients, and their experiences
became the window through which
I realized how meaningful a career
in health could be. They also
poured countless hours into helping the community in other ways,
including initiating and leading
the effort to build a temple in
Miami.
As a young boy, I was sometimes frustrated by how much
time they put into service because
that meant I had to share my parents with so many other people.
But as I got older, I realized how
important their service was.
When I was 17 my sister and I
had an idea for building a program
to address HIV/AIDS in India. My
Vivek Murthy through the years. He speaks eloquently of the lessons of his upbringing
parents were very encouraging —
COURTESY: DR H MURTHY
even though we were freshmen in
college and they were worried
about our studies.
My parents have always led by
example, and they have encouraged my sister and me to do the
same.
How much of an influence have
your parents and others, both in
your family and extended circle of
friends and colleagues, had on
both your professional career, as a
physician and teacher at Harvard
and also in your NGO work and
public service?
As I said in my swearing-in
speech I am who I am because of
my grandmother’s faith, my
father’s strength, my mother’s love,
my sister’s support and my
fiancée’s unyielding belief in me. I
just can’t begin to thank them
enough for the sacrifices they have
made during this journey.
As I mentioned in my speech, the
It has been an extraordinary journey. I
am grateful for the opportunity to serve and
am truly honored to be our nation’s
Surgeon General.
During these past few months, I have had
the opportunity to meet people in small
towns and big cities all across America, and
they have shared with me their challenges
and their ideas.
Despite all the difficulties we face in
terms of health, I am more encouraged
than ever before by the energy and ideas I
encounter across the country.
It is this ingenuity that I believe will
enable us to build a healthier and stronger
nation.
During the protracted Senate confirmation process, which took over a year, following your nomination by President Obama,

moment I decided to
become a physician was when I was quite
young and my father, who was a family
practitioner in Miami, and my mother, who
managed his clinic, woke my sister and me
in the middle of the night and drove us to
this trailer park where a patient who my
father had been treating, who had been
struggling with cancer, had passed away.
My parents were so worried about his
wife grieving alone and wanted to be there
for her immediately after we heard the sad
news. To them, they were not just patients,
but friends.
As I said in my speech, I will never forget seeing my mother in her sari holding
Ruth as she cried on the front step of their
home and even though their life paths
were so different, yet at that moment they
were family.
As I said, not the kind of family that is
chosen for you, but the kind you choose
for yourself — all part of a community.
And not only was that the moment I
decided to become a physician, but
learned from my father over those years
and my mother who ran his clinic that
being a doctor is not just about diagnosing
and treating, but about building relationships and being part of a community.
I can’t stress this enough — I would not
be Surgeon General without my parents,
sister, and my fiancée and all of my mentors, friends, and colleagues through the
years. They are my most important anchors, and their countless sacrifices have
made me the person I am today. Their generosity and humility continue to inspire me
in the work that I do.
How important do you believe public service is, particularly for an upwardly mobile
and burgeoning community like the IndianAmerican community? How much are you
impressed by this trend of your generation
of Indian Americans — particularly by the
numbers of them serving in the Obama
administration, and previously in the Bush
administration, and also in Congress, state
and local legislatures, etc?
I am thrilled to see more Indian
Americans dedicating their lives to public
service. The participation of minority communities in government is essential because
in order to execute its role most effectively,
the composition of our government must
reflect the people it serves.
Seeing more Latinos, African Americans,
Asian-American/Pacific
Islanders, and Native
Americans run for office and
serve in career and appointed
positions in government gives
me hope for the future.
We need to continue to
encourage public service
engagement in all ethnic communities in our country.
In this regard, I know like a
4M12
lot of your Indian-American
public sector colleagues, you

India Abroad June 19, 2015

UJALA Foundation

congratulates
India Abroad Award Winners
Ujala is proud to contribute to the following organizations:
Cornell University School of Engineering
Drexel University School of Business
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia
The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Legal Aid of D.C.
Philadelphia Zoo
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
And many more…

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M10
Vivek H Murthy
may shy away from the label of role model. But what advice
would you have for younger Indian Americans about the
inherent value of public service and seva, if even only for a
certain period of time in their professional and private sector careers, if not full-time?
It can be tempting to think of seva as service to others.
But it inevitably benefits the person performing the seva as
well. My parents inspired my early service endeavors and
those became extraordinary sources of personal growth.
I learned new skills that helped me in my future work. I
met inspiring people who pushed me to think about my life
in a broader context. And I had the opportunity to see how
gratifying it can be to contribute something positive to the
lives of others.
I believe there is a great deal to be gained by pursuing a
path of service in one’s career.
Lastly, service is as much about action as it is about
mindset. Whether you are delivering health care, managing
a hotel, working in a restaurant, or selling retail items, you
can bring a spirit of service to the work you do.
After you were officially confirmed in December, you virtually hit the ground running, traveling across the country
to highlight the priorities of your agenda. Can you elaborate
on your most important and urgent priorities?
Besides fighting childhood obesity, tobacco use and
endorsing strongly ACA, what are the other pressing objectives on your agenda that you would like the populace at
large to be cognizant of?
As I outlined in my speech, the key priorities besides

fighting for healthcare for all in the United States and also
keeping up the fight against the rising tide of diabetes,
heart disease and cancer and also the campaign to keep
America tobacco-free and drug-free, others include the
issues of mental illness, drug-abuse, urging vaccinations for
preventable diseases and getting out the correct information, because the Surgeon General’s mandate is communicating the best available scientific information to the public
regarding ways to improve personal and public health.
Besides losing nearly half-a-million people to tobaccorelated disease, 42 million people in our country struggle
with mental illness. Heroin and prescription drug abuse
ravage towns across America. Diseases that are preventable
with vaccine use, which we had thought had been contained or eliminated, have come back with a vengeance
because of fear and misinformation.
Also, as I said, health equity is a civil rights issue and it’s
unacceptable that who you are, where you come from and
whom you love plays too big a role in determining your
health, as does being poor, which is too great a factor —
which affects one in five children — in determining who is
healthy and who is not.
This is unacceptable in a great nation as ours. So, for all
this, as I outlined in my swearing in speech, we have to
eliminate the roadblocks that prevent us from achieving
our best health.
To this end we have to combat misinformation and give
people the most accurate information so that they can
make the best decisions for their own health.
We have to move from a culture of treatment to prevention and changing behaviors that keep us from our best
health.
You are not only a physician but also a techie of sorts, hav-

From left,Vivek Murthy’s role as Surgeon General has taken him to Ebola-hit Liberia where he met Liberian
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and US Ambassador to Liberia Deborah R Malac to discuss efforts to help
strengthen local health-care capacity.
TWITTER.COM/SURGEON_GENERAL

ing started your own technology company. In this regard, how do you intend to bring this expertise
and exponentially evolving technology developments as a
catalyst to your work and in helping to foster your priorities?
When used thoughtfully, technology can help us share
knowledge and strengthen a sense of community and personal connection.
As part of my goal to modernize the office of the Surgeon
General, I am working to add new tools to our arsenal that
will allow us to build bidirectional communication channels with the public.
I also plan to work with entrepreneurs to explore how
technology can help us create a prevention based society by
addressing the social determinants of health.
After your formal swearing in by Vice President Biden at
the very elaborate ceremony at Fort Myer in April, you left
the next week for Liberia. Can you describe your visit and
your evaluation of the Ebola crisis and if you are confident
that the Ebola virus has been effectively contained?
In this context, what’s going to be your plan of action from
your bully pulpit to keep the momentum going to eliminate
this virus?
It was an honor to go there to decommission the
Monrovia Medical Unit, where healthcare workers infected
in Liberia were cared for by the brave men and women of
the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service
— part of what they do every day. More than 6,700 men
and women in over 800 locations around the world.
For nearly six months, these brave Americans treated
health care workers who may have become infected with
the Ebola virus while responding to the current outbreak.
That was their mission at the Monrovia Medical Unit.
I had the privilege of meeting members of ‘Team Four,’
the last team of Commissioned Corps officers to staff the
MMU. I joined them in Monrovia as we transitioned
equipment and resources from the MMU to the government of Liberia.
I was also fortunate to have met Liberia’s President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and US Ambassador Deborah
Malac. President Sirleaf told me about how having our
public health officers stand up and manage the MMU
was a critical signal to international relief workers that
the US would care for them if they got sick.
I heard this echoed by numerous international organizations as well and how our presence in Liberia bolstered global confidence in the effort and spurred a
number of countries to send volunteers to assist with the
Ebola response throughout West Africa.
But our role in Liberia is about more than dealing with
the crisis in front of us. It is also about building and
expanding the capacity of Liberian health care workers,
ensuring that they would not only be better equipped to
fight Ebola, but that they would be able to address the
health care needs of their people going forward.
The MMU has become a ‘force multiplier,’ creating a
positive dynamic that should benefit the region for years
to come. Over the past six months, a rotation of four
teams of Commissioned Corps officers were deployed
away from their families and their homes to provide lifesaving care for people they’d never met before…
Several officers told me it was a privilege for them to
serve in this critical mission. On the last day of my trip, I
joined President Sirleaf, Ambassador Malac and
Commissioned Corps officers to hand over the resources
of the MMU to the government of Liberia.
This is not just about Ebola. It’s about the next epidemic and the one after that. I look forward to the
‘Magic Day’— as President Sirleaf calls it — when Liberia
will be declared Ebola-free. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M13

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He had a big vision and this
is probably one step’

An emotional moment for the Murthy family
at Vivek Murthy’s Commissioning and
Change of Command ceremony as
Vice President Joe Biden watches.
Inset, when the VP kneeled down to speak
with the new Surgeon General’s grandmother.
PARESH GANDHI and TWITTER.COM/SURGEON_GENERAL

Myetraie Murthy
Mother

I

am very happy. Of course, all of us are very
happy, but mainly for him because he had
this vision and it is beautiful to see this vision
culminate into reality.
I think Vivek and Rashmi’s inclination to public
service is partly due to environment in the house.
They would see everybody doing the same thing
and it inspires them to do community
work. And, besides, they were very
compassionate by nature. So, that
helps.
With me, I never saw Vivek as a very
quiet kid — he was not mischievous,
but he was always full of energy and
bounce and fun.
He was very focused. As a young kid,
when we used to come back from
school — when I used to pick them up
4M15

‘Vivek was always very vibrant and affectionate with us’
Dr Hallegere Murthy
Father

I

never thought it will come to this level
of success, but I did know this is the
land where the ability of the individual is recognized. Before I was at the
University of Miami — and I was in
England, and Canada and different parts of
the world — if I had to ask a question in
medical meetings, because I spoke differently, my accent is different, even to recognize the question I had to struggle.
Here, when I was at the University of
Miami, when I was in a meeting — one of
the continuing education meetings — when
I was asking the questions, my professor
would recognize me and say, ‘Hey, Dr
Murthy has some important issues to men-

tion, let us discuss that.’ That is when it
first struck me that my views also have
some value and respect, which I did not
know in other countries.
This is the land of opportunity not only
for financial reasons, but it is also the land
of opportunity for recognition for values,
and this (Vivek’s nomination and confirmation) is one of the examples of how individual hard work and values of the individual has been given recognition. They don’t
want to put the person’s ability away in the
service of the community just because he
belonged to some other country.
Volunteering here and in India during
trips back to the country initiated the
opportunity for Vivek and Rashmi to see
what kind of pleasure they can get through
service.

In fact, my father used to do the same.
During the rainy season he would do cultivation, and during the dry season — when
there is no work in the land — he would go
from village to village raising funds to build
a students hostel.
So, I knew the pleasure of doing that. I
used to also do that in India. When I came
here, I did similar social activities, children’s play activities, holiday activities —
that kind of thing. Then I got involved with
building a temple in Miami and through
that the children got involved and enjoyed
service.
I used to organize, once a year, an event
to feed the homeless. We would prepare
about 1,500 lunches of about 2,000 calories (each). We would go there in morning
and get all the volunteers — students, chil-

dren — to do everything from serving to
washing the dishes. We gave them many
opportunities to experience the joys of service.
In addition to good grades, they had creative ideas, and we would support them.
When they started an
HIV/AIDS education program,
we supported them. They were
first doing it internally in
Miami from school to school.
When they thought of going
outside, they thought it would
be a good opportunity to go to
India — they had heard the
forecast that it would become
the AIDS capital. We supported all of that through fundrais- 4M15
ing, motivating the community

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M14

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He believes in the
possibilities of what
can be done’
Dr Alice Tzu-ying Chen
Fiancée

V

ivek and I were at Yale for three
years together, but we didn’t
know each other then. I was
doing my undergraduate degree
in biology from 1997 to 2001 and he was
in medical school. We have some friends
in common and we might have been at the
same parties together. But we basically
didn’t know each other.
We first met in 2008 (by then she had
completed her medical degree from Cornell
University and her internal medicine residency from University of California, Los
Angeles) when Vivek had started the
organization that became Doctors for
America, and I signed a petition in support of the organization.
He started it in Boston and I was in Los
Angeles.
We got to know each other in building
DFA together. We started working together, and in this day and age with technology over e-mails and texts and Skype and
phone calls, we got to know each other
better and better over time.
We had a long-distance relationship for
six years.
I am now the Executive Director of DFA
for the last four years and run it from DC
and I work from DC and LA, and we are
mainly advocating on issues of concerns

for patients.
I saw how genuine he was, and how
much of a world vision he had to make the
world better, and how he could get a
whole room full of people excited about
the possibilities of what they could do to
make the world better for other people.
I always found him believing in the possibilities of what could be done. He
believes very much in what he says and he
promoted that and people are attracted to
that.
When things were tough (during the
year after his nomination by President
Barack Obama and his confirmation by
the Senate hung in limbo), I was amazed
by his steely toughness and determination.
When things were tough, we would think
about what he could do as Surgeon
General and how much work had to be
done to help the health of the nation.
Of course, he was lucky to have so many
groups of people who came together to
fight for the confirmation. n
Dr Alice Chen is Executive Director,
Doctors for America, which Dr Vivek H
Murthy co-founded. She is also a practicing
internal medicine hospitalist and Assistant
Clinical Professor at the University of
California, Los Angeles.
Chen and Murthy will wed August 21 in
Sonoma, California.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

Vivek Murthy and Alice Chen got engaged in New Haven, Connecticut.

‘We were both
reclusive together’

With just 13 months separating Rashmi Murthy and her brother Vivek, the
siblings are as close as twins.
COURTESY: DR H MURTHY

Dr Rashmi Murthy
Sister

W

e’ve always had a great
relationship; we’ve always
felt close to each other.
Vivek is not much younger,
just 13 months.
We had a great relationship growing
up. We had the usual sibling fights, but I
can’t count more than a year or two of
discord. We really got along pretty well.
We were in the same grade from
1st grade onwards. So, we were almost
like twins.
I guess we were both nerds, we were
both reclusive together. Both of us were
shy as kids... So, both of us, growing up,
spent a lot of time together.
For both of us, our parents had always
lived with community service and we
had always participated, either in temple
activities, or my dad was always working
with the temple to organize some feedings. So, we were always doing something that was socially service-oriented.
One summer, we had gone to India
and met a lady by the name of Dr Latha
Jaganathan and she was doing some of
work on her own to fight HIV/AIDS, by
herself with one nurse. She would go
into schools, and do a little education
here and there. But it was a very small
effort and we went with her and joined
up with her one summer and then we

decided, from that year on, to try something different and get some funding
and make it into a larger project.
Our meeting with Dr Jaganathan was
on a family trip, but after that everything was independent. Every summer,
we would go to India and different
schools in Bangalore, meet with the
principals and convince them. We were
in high school then — senior high.
This was part of the same thing (the
service oriented work they had been
doing as kids).
Today (with Vivek being sworn in as
Surgeon General), it’s a mix of emotions.
It’s hard to describe and hard to put into
specific words. It’s surprising and surreal, but at the same time, not surprising
that he is where he is. He has always
been someone who has valued honesty,
hard work, compassion in other people
and has demonstrated the same in his
life. Today, was just beyond words for us.
We are immensely proud of him.
And he’s not as serious as he looks
sometimes — he has a very fun-loving,
playful, mischievous side. I’ll just say
that if he knows you well, and you are a
friend of his — he’s good with nicknames — he’s probably already coined a
nickname for you. n
Dr Rashmi Murthy is a Florida-based
family practice physician.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M15

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He can definitely
contribute
substantially to health
and human services in
the US’

Mother and
son in a 1994
snapshot from
the family
album.

Tumaiya Settihalgere
Uncle

H

e achieved this level of
success through his
hard work and dedication
and selfless sacrifice.
I remember, when he was
at Yale University, he used to
get some funding for summer activities, and on one
occasion he went to India —
Yale had sent him to do
some research and they had
given him some money.
Although he was a student, he donated a substantial sum of that allowance
to people in India to proDr Vivek Murthy takes a stand in a
mote his vision and activicampaign against smoking. He has
ties. That was the level of
also begun a campaign for
his selflessness when he was
vaccinating children.
a student at Yale.
TWITTER.COM/SURGEON_GENERAL
With regards to his human
dynamics and relationships,
I remember when he would come to New Jersey during some summers
and breaks when he was a kid.
On one occasion we were at a gym; it was his first day there and
within minutes he developed a rapport with them. They shared information with him as if he was going to come back again. When we
were ready to leave they were all sad to see him go. That was the level
of his interactions. He is very much a people person.
He is very simple. He can go to the lowest level of comfort — he
doesn’t expect or need any comforts.
Vivek was a very voracious and dedicated student. Even I wouldn’t
study beyond 10 pm or 11 pm, but if there was an exam, he would
study all night. He would prepare with focus and determination and
without sleep. He is very determined. He has a lot of resilience and a
lot of patience. He hardly loses patience.
It (when Dr Murthy was sworn in as Surgeon General) was a touching monument to his hard work. I think he can definitely deliver and
contribute substantially to health and human services in the US.
Although he may be young (Dr Murthy is the youngest surgeon general in American history and it was a point that some critics had
brought up), his commitment and dedication and maturity in conduct and action is what matters. He is the best. It’s a gift. He’s a very
selfless guy, he will do his best.
He has the qualifications, talent, commitment and perseverance
and when you have that experience, age has no consequence. n
Tumaiya Settihalgere, a New Jersey-based attorney, is the younger
brother of Dr Vivek H Murthy’s dad.
He spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

COURTESY:
DR H MURTHY

3M13

Myetraie Murthy
— he would basically finish his homework as fast as
possible and then would do other things. We would
play games together, do puzzles together, watch
movies together. He was like every other kid.
I had a feeling both my children would become
physicians. I think it was partly their own nature
and partly what they saw around the house (in
terms of their father’s influence as a physician, who
put the needs of patients first and would also make
house calls).
He had a vision, I could sense that from high
school onwards. He had a bigger vision than the
usual goal of getting a good job and making a good
living and stuff like that.
There was a time all his colleagues were making
good amounts of money and he was not so focused

3M13

Dr Hallegere Murthy
members to finance it. They
would also do fundraising themselves.
Vivek was always very vibrant
and affectionate with us. But with
others he was initially shy. I still
remember in elementary school
when I saw he was not interacting with children; I was actually
concerned that he was standing
by himself. But we did not make
an issue out of it. We didn’t want
him to be uncomfortable. But
gradually, he became very popular in the school because he
would have a lot of ideas and
because of his ideas the children
would flock around him and my
daughter.

on that side. When I asked him about that that, he
said, ‘I have a vision to do something good for the
people at large, so that part comes secondary.’
(When the Senate did not take up Vivek Murthy’s
nomination and debate his confirmation) they
were pretty tough months. But the family as a
whole, stayed together and supported him. And he
is very goal-oriented — if he makes up his mind
and he wants to achieve something, he tries his
best to do that.
I don’t know about this being the ultimate
American Dream; he had a big vision and this is
probably one step. Probably, this is the only country, where people have an opportunity to do something, and not be limited by many things that we
are in other countries. n
Myetraie Murthy has managed her husband's
medical clinic from day one.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

I wouldn’t say it’s (Vivek becoming Surgeon General) the ultimate American Dream — but it’s
a significant American Dream. I
feel happy, excited and overwhelmed to see all the support
from the people who have come
to wish him well and participate
in the occasion.
More than the position, it was
the cause, and this was very
important for him. Whatever he
had said (referring to Vivek
Murthy’s remarks about gun control, which put his confirmation
process at risk) it was the right
cause for the community, not only
for the United States but around
the world. For saying the right
thing, if someone has to be persecuted or punished, we cannot sit
back and take it. So, that was the
determination he had — to fight

the wrongful action or the intent,
rather than for the position.
(And taking on critics who
believed his son was too young for
the job) Maturity of mind and
willingness to serve is a more
important criteria than youth.
You can be 70 years old without
new ideas. Age does not dictate
what abilities we have. It is the
work and the performance and
the history of the person, which
should be given an opportunity. n
Dr Hallegere Murthy is an
alumnus of Mysore Medical
College who came to the US in
1980, via England and Canada. He
landed in Miami and never relocated, establishing his family
practice and living there for the
past three-and-a-half decades
He spoke to Aziz Haniffa

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M16

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘The trajectory of my life changed when I met Vivek’
Mona Mangat
Friend and fellow doctor with a vision

I

am the child of Indian immigrants. I
grew up with tales of my parent’s
arrival in this country with nothing
but $10 in their pocket and a dream
in their hearts. I grew up with a sense of
what family means. I struggled with navigating a cultural war between Indian and
American values.
I inherently knew what expectations had
been placed on me. I followed the path and
by the time I met Vivek I had graduated
from an accelerated BS/MD program, completed a residency and fellowship, married
a fellow Indian American and had three
beautiful children.
I know my family was proud of me but
there was a yearning in my heart; one that
told me I could do more than what I was
doing. I had a sense that my voice could
make a difference in the world.
Vivek and I grew up in similar circumstances — children of Indian immigrants
making our way through this cultural mash
up. Yet our paths diverged early on. While I

Shalini Pammal,
Mentee, supporter and
a leader at Doctors for America

D

was taking the path well-worn Vivek was
creating a non-profit to help educate young
Indians about HIV/AIDS. He didn’t stop
there. His list of accomplishments is long —
two more non-profits focused on global
health, an MBA, and a tech start-up company. And now he is our first IndianAmerican Surgeon General.
We met during the very early days of
Doctors for America, a national organization of more than 16,000 physicians and
medical students in all 50 states working
together to improve the health of the
nation. In DFA, I found a home and a vessel for my passion to actively make the
world a better place.
From the first time we met I knew that
Vivek was destined for great things.
I have a few very distinct memories of
Vivek. Over five years ago he gave one of
the first public speeches I’ve heard him
give. I was moved to tears in ways that only
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and perhaps
President John F Kennedy have moved me.
His passion for people is conveyed in every
speech he gives.
The other memory is during a bus tour

we took through the southern United
States. I will not easily forget Vivek (and
DFA’s Executive Director Alice Chen)
maneuvering a very large RV through the
city streets of Tampa, Atlanta, Columbia,
Charlotte and many smaller cities. Our 12day journey started at my home in Florida.
My husband made a wonderful meal for the
group of 15, 20 people and the night ended
with Vivek helping us wash the dishes.
While it is unusual for an Indian male to
do dishes it is also unusual for a guest in
your home to do them. This anecdote illustrates a humility that is a core value of his.
It is seen in his parents and sister as well
and serves as a testament to the wonderful
family he was raised in.
It has been said that ‘It was pride that
changed angels into devils; it is humility
that makes men as angels (St Augustine).’
Vivek has accomplished more than most his
age and has done so without arrogance and
with great humility.
Today, I serve as the board chairperson of
DFA. The trajectory of my life changed
when I met Vivek, and because of the
organization he co-founded, DFA, I left the

well-worn path and stood beside Vivek and
thousands of other doctors across the county as we learned that there is power in our
collective voices. I have learned to see most
challenges as opportunities. I rose to a position of leadership within DFA because he
believed in me and saw qualities in me that
I barely knew I had.
I only wonder what path would I have
chosen had I met Vivek 10 years earlier?
I consider Vivek a mentor, a dear friend, a
leader, a colleague and the brother I never
had. He is Uncle Vivek to my children.
My heart swells with pride as I watch the
tremendous work he has begun to do as
Surgeon General. He inspires a generation
of Indian Americans to think about taking
the path less traveled. I am honored to have
worked with Vivek and know what a privilege it is to call him a friend. n
Dr Mona Vishin Mangat has been active
with Doctors for America, co-founded by Dr
Vivek Murthy, since its inception and now
serves as the Board Chair. She also practices
allergy & immunology in Florida. She resides
there with her husband and four children.

‘Remarkable ability to enable others’

His unshakable faith and perpetual optimism
r Vivek Murthy garnered the attention of
have inspired so many others in the health-care
a nation in a historic confirmation
field, including myself.
process to be the 19th Surgeon General.
Even when it seems that the challenges are too
The entire nation heard the story of an
great, Vivek shared with me that he believes in hope
extraordinarily dedicated physician from humble
as a sustaining force, to carry us forward into a
roots, with stellar academic credentials and an
brighter future. Despite formidable odds, I carried
exceptional aptitude for coalition building.
this same lesson with me to help build the moveHis countless accomplishments — from founding
ment that fought for him to fulfill the position in
a successful software technology company, to buildwhich he was always meant to serve — as America’s
ing a national, grassroots medical organization —
Top Doctor.
portray Murthy as the brilliant leader, educator and
I know he will work toward fulfilling his vision of
innovator that he is.
the great American community, with his skillful
What I have found even more captivating in the
ability to listen, innovate and unite others in a
years I have known him are the myriad stories peoshared goal toward that end. I look forward to seeple have to share about Vivek as a mentor and
ing so many others benefit from the depth of his
friend. These personal stories formed the substance
compassion and his dedication to the well-being of
of a unique movement, comprised of medical and
As president of Doctors for America Vivek Murthy was outspoken
every American.
public health professionals, progressive groups and
His tenure as the 19th Surgeon General of the
the South Asian Diaspora, to confirm the nation’s first about the health-care reform bill.
DRSFORAMERICA
United States will surely be one marked by extraordiIndian-American Surgeon General.
nary impact — like the historic nomination that preceded it
change and bring people into the folds of a movement.
Nearly five years ago, I remember walking into the
— and I am so humbled to support him as I move forward
Following our first conversation, I quickly became
Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston one evening to
in my own work to create the equitable, value-based healthinvolved in Doctors for America, as a pre-medical advocate
meet with Vivek. He was a pre-medical adviser for Harvard
care system our nation deserves. n
in various campaigns for affordable, quality health care.
College undergraduates, and I was a bright-eyed college
Vivek enabled me to discover a passion to heal an imperfect
junior, yearning for mentorship.
Shalini Pammal graduated with a Bachelor’s in Arts from
health-care system that eventually led me to pursue a masAs I rattled on about my background, my professional
Harvard College in 2013 and did her master’s at the Johns
ter’s degree in health policy and management.
interests, and everything in between, I distinctly remember
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, focusing on
What I remember most about all our conversations is
how sincerely Vivek listened to me. His profound ability to
health policy and management. She has held leadership
how invigorating his spirit and energy were in fueling my
listen and to make everyone he interacts with feel heard
roles in Doctors for America and the Stand with Vivek
own dedication to public health and public service. Even
struck me as one of his most admirable qualities.
campaign to confirm Dr Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General.
after long days in the hospital, Vivek would always make
This quality is only surpassed by his remarkable ability to
time to talk with me.
enable others to find their own voice as advocates for

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M17

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M18

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He invests in
relationships
as the currency
of his success’
Dave Chokshi
Mentee

‘I

was never supposed to be the guy giving
speeches in rooms like this… (but)
throughout my life, I was fortunate to
have had teachers and mentors who were
able to see something in me before I was able to see
it in myself. And that has made all the difference.’
Dr Vivek Murthy spoke these words upon assuming command as the 19th Surgeon General of the
United States. For those of us who know Vivek, it
was typically humble — and the rest of his address
channeled the sincerity and soaring vision that he
pairs inimitably. Yet it also seemed, in a sense,
inverted, because he’s precisely the guy we want
giving those speeches, and there are so many of
us he has taught and mentored.
As my supervising physician when I was a resident, Vivek taught me how to know when to slow
down within the frenetic pace of the hospital; to
center myself to become a better doctor for my
patients.
As a co-founder of Doctors for America, he
showed the simple power of direct advocacy, contributing to a movement that brought health care
reform in the United States. And through a turbulent confirmation process, Vivek demonstrated
grace and resolve, even when the odds were long.
There are other things I have learned from Vivek,
as much personal as professional. He invests in
relationships as the currency of his success. He has
an uncanny ability to know what makes you tick,
and to speak to that part of you. And he has an
insatiable curiosity about people’s stories, which
makes him a great doctor and a generous friend.
We live in an unprecedented time of change and
opportunity in global health. Leaders must shape a
public health vision around scientific advances and
new ways to engage people and
communities. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is
that kind of leader. n
Dr Dave Chokshi is Assistant Vice President, NYC
Health and Hospitals Corporation. He is also
Assistant Professor, Population Health and Medicine,
NYU Langone Medicine Center. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, supervised by Dr Vivek Murthy. During his training, he did
clinical work in Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana,
and India.

Vivek Murthy, third from right, with family and friends when he graduated from Harvard.
COURTESY: DR H MURTHY

‘Early on, I knew that Vivek
was destined for greatness’
Akilesh Palanisamy
Friend

V

ivek Murthy has been my best friend for the past
20 years. We have been fortunate to maintain a
very close personal and professional relationship
over this time.
When we met in 1994 at Harvard University, I was
struck by his warm personality, thoughtfulness and precocious wisdom. As we became roommates, I grew to love
his kind and caring nature, his wit, and his sense of
humor. His loyalty and devotion to his friends and family
impressed me deeply. We worked together on problem
sets, studied together, and would often stay up all night
talking about every topic imaginable.
Early on, I knew that Vivek was destined for greatness.
His desire to make a difference, perseverance, and commitment to service were inspiring. He had a rare ability to
combine lofty vision with practical attention to detail. His
capacity to push himself and work tirelessly was incredible. I sincerely hoped that he would be able to achieve the
goals that he had and fulfill his dreams.
Over the years, I watched as Vivek built up exceptional
credentials as a physician, public health expert and entrepreneur. I am so happy to see these culminate in his current position as Surgeon General.
In terms of personal qualities, Vivek is truly exemplary
in every way. Throughout the past two decades, I have
deeply admired his integrity, intelligence and character.
But what has always impressed me the most is his genuine
compassion for others – even strangers.
To illustrate, let me describe an incident that occurred

several years ago. The cable repairman was over fixing the
television at Vivek’s apartment. It was almost 2 pm. Vivek
and I had been busy all day and had skipped lunch. As is
his habit, Vivek struck up a conversation with the technician, asking him how his day was going, etc. He found out
that the technician was having a very busy day and had
skipped lunch. Even though Vivek had not had lunch, he
went to the kitchen and made a sandwich for the repairman. Naturally, the technician insisted that he could not
accept it, but eventually, because of Vivek’s persistence, he
did — and he was so grateful.
To me, this small incident was revealing because it
demonstrated Vivek’s kindness and compassion, and his
willingness to put other people before himself.
When nobody is watching and there is no secondary
gain to be had, one’s true nature usually comes through. I
have seen it so many times before, but never fail to be
impressed by the depth of Vivek’s concern for others. I
have never met someone with so much integrity and such
a fierce desire to help others and genuinely work to make
the world a better place. I cannot think of anyone who is
more qualified to serve as our Surgeon General.
I hope that he has a long and successful tenure in this
position and know that he will have a significant impact
on the health of our nation and our world. n
Dr Akilesh Palanisamy is a family medicine and
integrative medicine physician at Sutter Pacific Medical
Foundation in California. Though he and Dr Vivek Murthy
went to different medical schools after their time at Harvard
University, they have remained the best of friends over the
last two decades.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M19

THE GENIUS
There’s something about Manjul Bhargava that endears
him to people who meet him. And it is never just that he
has won the Fields Medal, the top prize given to a
mathematician, or a host of other honors.
P Rajendran discovers why in this conversation with one
of the finest mathematicians in a long time and winner of
the India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for
Excellence.

Presented by

MANJUL

BHARGAVA

INDIA ABROAD
PUBLISHER’S
SPECIAL AWARD FOR
EXCELLENCE 2014

For his unique brilliance; for
being a mathematical genius;
for winning one of the world’s
most prized medals.

DOMINIC XAVIER

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M20

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

T

here’s something about Manjul
Bhargava that endears him to
people who meet him. It could
be that he has solved a lot of
very difficult problems in mathematics. Or that his work is
marked by a breathtaking
blend of experience and a
child-like willingness to experiment. That he
knows magic and music and tennis and used
them in his classes. That he is willing to play
undignified games like Assassins with students —
the kind that gets him squirted in the eye by a
dastardly teaching assistant.
It could be that he is passionate about the historical achievements of India, the country his
family hails from, while never being reduced to
jingoism. Or that he is willing to do much to promote education there.
Perchance it is that he is such an advocate of the
pure sciences, and not just the products of its
applications. Or it could just be that he is just a
very decent man, instead of someone who could
easily get away with arrogance and pomposity.
Whatever it is that people find nice about Dr
Bhargava, it is never just that he has won the
Fields Medal, the top prize given to a mathematician, that he has won the Clay Research Award,
the undergraduate-level Morgan Prize or a host of
other honors. While Dr Bhargava is one of the
finest mathematicians in a long time, there is
clearly more to him that that.
Born in Canada and brought up on Long Island,
Dr Bhargava was restless as a child but changed
Manjul Bhargava accepts the 2014 Fields Medal, the top prize given to a mathematician.
markedly as he grew up. As his mother Mira
ICM2014.ORG
Bhargava put it, ‘He’s so mature, cool, collected,
When conferred the prize by the International Congress
sober, serene. His mischief transformed into a good sense of
of the International Mathematical Union last year, Dr
humor. So it’s just a different person…’
Bhargava — as he had promised the attending undergraduBut even when he was a child, Manjul was mathematicalate students — gave a talk that was easier to understand
ly minded. Quick with shape-sorting, by three he had develthan the laudation describing what he did to deserve it. And
Fermat’s famous Last Theorem) and mentor Peter Sarnak
oped a finger-based complex counting system, the details of
perhaps because it was held in Seoul — a math-friendly
discouraged him from taking such a difficult problem as
which he would not tell his mother, who is also a mathenation — so many of the grateful students mobbed him that
Carl Gauss’s law from the early 17th century for the compomatician and teaches at Hofstra University. But he hated
he had to inch his way through the delighted crowd under
sition of binary quadratic forms. Realizing that the law,
school and avoided classes, opting to sit in his mother’s
the protection of a security detail, even leaving his family
though algebraic in form, has a geometrical dimension,
office and write stories instead. He has admitted that he
behind, just so he could get back to his room.
Dr Bhargava, who has this penchant for playing with toys,
hated the way math was taught in school. And yet, her
When he was merely popular a few years ago, according
was fiddling with a 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube and wondered what
undergraduate students went to her ninth-grade son for
to Professor Sarnak, ‘His students think he is the greatest
would happen if he decided to see his problem in three
help with their math problems.
thing that walked this earth’ — it was about all right. But
dimensions, working with numbers at the corners of the
Throughout, he was strongly influenced by India, visiting
global fame has come with its disadvantages.
Rubik Cube. He also had the advantage of reading Gauss’s
it often. His maternal grandfather Purushottam Lal
Dr Bhargava was busy before winning the Fields Medal,
original text, shorn of the complex dross that accreted
Bhargava taught him Sanskrit while he studied the tabla
which is given only every four years and often attracts more
around it in the intervening centuries.
under such experts as Prem Prakash Sharma and Ustad
respect among academicians than the Nobel Prizes, selecOf course, being Manjul, he had also read in Sanskrit an
Zakir Hussain.
tion for the latter having possible political overtones too.
ancestral version of the same idea, put together by matheMeanwhile, he also read Sanskrit treatises, among which
But the immense prestige, his teaching assignments, his
matician Brahmagupta of Ujjain, India, in the seventh cenhe found such ‘modern’ ideas as the Fibonacci sequence
research work, his wish to use his fame to promote educatury AD.
(the older, the Indian mathematician and grammarian who
tion in the pure sciences, his obliging nature — and perhaps
Whatever helped him, Manjul, still a graduate student,
worked on it being Hemachandra, born circa 1088 BCE) or
his desire to try and answer all his mails perhad an elegant solution to the problem, one that
the combinatorial discoveries of one Pingala, who worked
sonally — give him little time alone.
addressed in a few lines what had taken the redoubtable
on prosody a few centuries before the Common Era began).
In a conversation with India Abroad, Manjul
Gauss 20 pages to prove. The result was 14 new Gauss
The tabla has been very useful to him when he wants to
Bhargava discusses what his work means, his
composition laws.
teach students the mathematical possibilities latent in
interests and his future plans.
As Professor Sarnak described it, Princeton did not want
musical beats.
him to go — which is why, at 28, after having done a stint at
More recently, he has been using clever magic tricks to
How does it feel a year after winning the Fields
Princeton’s own Institute of Advanced Study and at
bring math alive for non-mathematical students while
Medal, the highest award in math?
Harvard, in 2003 he became what at the time was the uninever taking away from the rigor of the material.
It’s been 10 months, but it sure doesn’t feel
versity’s youngest professor.
Though Manjul was a valedictorian at the Plainedge High
like it. Time has flown by with so much going
Dr Bhargava has worked on other theorems in number
School in North Massapequa (1992), and won the Morgan
on, so many events. These have certainly been
theory, his approach mixing the abstruse with the fun and
Prize while at Harvard (BA, 1996), it was his PhD thesis
4M21
the busiest and fastest 10 months I’ve ever
novel, all of which made him a shoo-in for the Fields
that took his mentors’ collective breath away.
experienced. I really haven’t had much time to
Medal, given only to mathematicians yet below 40.
His adviser at Princeton Andrew Weil (who solved the

THE GENIUS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M21

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M20
Manjul Bhargava
think about it all!
But it’s definitely a pleasant feeling. I feel
very fortunate and privileged especially
because so many opportunities to do good
have opened up.
Unlike others who ease up a bit after winning the Fields, we are told you are as
fecund in output as ever. How do you make
time for mathematics, popular lectures,
musical performances, magic lessons, and
your work on education?
I guess the secret is that I really enjoy all
of these things, so it doesn’t feel like work
or ‘making time.’
On the other hand, it has been an unusually crazy and hectic year, so I am hoping it
will calm down a little bit soon!
You were recently in California, working
with mathematician Terence Tao. What are
you doing with him? What area are you
working on now? Why is it important?
We have a number of common interests
in the relatively new subject of random
matrices, an area that yields surprisingly
accurate models for various phenomena
across mathematics, chemistry, physics,
neuroscience, and more. I was visiting him
to talk about some of these remarkable
phenomena as they relate to our work, and
was simultaneously giving a lecture series
about ‘values of integer polynomials’ at
UCLA.
Why is mathematics education so important to you, so much so that you take time
off from your research to spend time on it?
I find it very unfortunate that a beautiful
and important subject like mathematics is
often taught as a very boring, robotic subject in school, so I am passionate about
bringing a change to this for the benefit of
the children.
In school, you hated mathematics classes,
and yet you were helping your mother’s college students with their work. You even
skipped a lot of school to spend some time
in India.
Given your experience, what would you
advise young people taking terrible math
classes to do, if they want to understand
math without hating it, too.
The way mathematics is taught in school
surely needs to be changed. But given that
things are as they are, there are many other
ways to ignite students’ interests in mathematics.
Many of the mathematicians that I know
(myself included) got interested in mathematics not through school, but through
sources outside school, such as maththemed summer programs or internships,
math contests, math clubs, math-related
games and puzzles, the books of Martin
Gardner, and so on.
Such approaches to mathematics allow
children to see the fun, inspirational, artistic side of mathematics through activities
other than school.

Professor Peter Sarnak, one of your mentors, advised you not to address a very difficult graduate thesis (generalizing Gauss’s
law for binary quadratic forms), but you did
it anyway — and succeeded. Are there some
aspects of math that intimidate you?
Of course — some problems seem so
beyond what we are currently capable of
doing that it is usually a good idea not to
spend too much of one’s time on
them! However, that was such a beautiful
problem that I couldn’t resist.
Fortunately, it ended well. It is good to
take risks sometimes.
In your early days at Princeton, were you
intimidated having Andrew Wiles as your
adviser, given that he solved Fermat’s Last
Theorem?
Absolutely — he was (and is) such a legend in the field! But he was also very nice
and very caring, and so that put his students at ease very quickly. I always enjoyed
talking to him and getting his advice on
matters mathematical and otherwise, and
still do.
Is there any other career you would have
considered if you had not been able to be a
mathematician?
I definitely thought about doing other
things when I was growing
up, including music, economics, physics, chemistry... and even mountain
climbing (when I was a
child)! But I somehow
always came back to mathematics, as I think I realized that this was the common thread of all my interests.

Being a musician was what I considered
most seriously. But it occurred to me at
some point that if I became a musician full
time, it would be hard to keep up mathematics, but if I went into academia and did
mathematics, I could still keep up my other
interests such as music. And that has
turned out to be true, fortunately!
Why do you encourage people to study
mathematics using puzzles and providing
real-life examples? Would it not be better to
just wait for interested students who are
willing to tough it out — such as those at the
lecture you gave at Seoul?
Some students never make it that far
because they never see the creative, fun,
and/or applicable side of mathematics, and
they give up too soon. I feel it is important
to reach people of all ages and levels and
backgrounds — and to adjust one’s outreach and teaching accordingly — so that
no one is left out and everyone is able to
participate, relate to, and get interested in
the subject.
You have highlighted real achievements
made by Indians in science and technology,
particularly after you have
become part of the Indian prime
minister’s team. Why is that so
important? Are there
not enough people
saying that Indians
developed everything
from zero to rocket
science and brain
surgery?
This is something I
4M22
have always done
and enjoyed doing,
and not just

Manjul Bhargava in his early years as a professor at Princeton University. In
recognition of his talent early in his career, India Abroad had honored him with
the Face of the Future Award 2008, inset.
COURTESY: THE BHARGAVAS AND PARESH GANDHI

Manjul Bhargava addresses a session
at the Indian Science Congress in
Mumbai. The mathematician, who
received the Padma Shri this year, is
inspiring many young Indians to
pursue pure mathematics.

Manjul Bhargava
recently! It is an unfortunate fact that Indian history of science is often taught incorrectly, or at least
incompletely, in school.
As I grew up reading ancient Indian books — scientific and otherwise — due to the influence of my
grandfather (Purshottam Lal Bhargava), the history of science in ancient India (and Asia more generally) became a wonderful tool for me to learn
mathematics and science, and over the past few
years has become a wonderful tool for me to teach!
For example, I love explaining the origins of various mathematical concepts in ancient Indian poetry, and I have found that it gives a really wonderful
way to teach and to get students excited.
It is a nice way to showcase the inspiring connections between mathematics and other subjects,
such as art, poetry, music, magic, and more.
You are right that people ‘say’ things that mix up
the real and proven facts with the fantastic and
unproven claims, such as the invention of the zero
in our place value system (real and proven) with ancient
rocket science (fantastic and unproven).
So, it is important to do more than just say and claim. It
is important to explain, analyze, think, and most of all, read
the original sources and understand what is actually there!
Music is more than a tool to teach math for you. How does
music affect you, given that you read more into it — and differently than other people?
I do really like to analyze music — the frequencies that
are used, how scales are constructed across different musical cultures of the world, and how rhythms are constructed
and improvised upon! There is so much beautiful mathematics in these things.
But most of the time when I listen to or play music, I
don’t think I do it very differently than other people. At that
moment, it is all about the art form and how much we are
able to express and say and touch people through melody
and rhythm.
You have evinced a deep interest in the evidence-based history of mathematics. Why is history so important to you?
I feel history is important because it teaches us how,
when, where, and why various central concepts first arose,
how people first conceived of them, and how they were first
used.
If one fast forwards a few hundred years, one finds that
these fundamental concepts have often become wrapped in
technical jargon and presented as part of some complicated
theory or algorithm — and the essence and the basic understanding of the concept is lost.
Learning the history and the origins of a concept allows
one to go back to basics, so to speak, and to understand
why the concept is central and fundamental.
Going back to basics and understanding and playing
around with the essence of a concept can often lead to real
breakthroughs and new ways of thinking.
This is indeed the way I have approached much of the
research mathematics that I do.
For example, I read Brahmagupta’s and Gauss’s original
works to eventually make progress on composition of quadratic forms in my PhD thesis, and I read Birch and
Swinnerton-Dyer’s original works to help make progress on
the average ranks of elliptic curves. I don’t think I could
have ever done these things without having first gone back
to the basics, learned these questions from first principles,
and seen why these things originally arose in history.

COURTESY: THE BHARGAVAS AND PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU

You have described your liking for poetry. What about the
literary form do you find particularly fascinating? Who are
the poets you really go for?
I love how poetry is able to say so much more than prose,
via ambiguous, double-meaning phrases, analogies, rhyme
schemes, meter, word play, sound play, and more!
I loved reading poetry growing up, in Sanskrit, Hindi,
and English, both ancient and modern. Some of my
favorites over the years include Kalidasa, Kabir, and Frost,
but there have been many.

You have also spoken in India for the need to
focus on pure sciences, not just their applications.
How does it matter if someone in another country
does the actual research — and, under the guidance of senior policymakers — you just engineer it
and profit from it.
That is a good question.
The answer is that it is very hard for one to
know about and understand the fundamental scientific research being done in the world if one is
not intimately connected with it. Engineers and applied scientists have to be able to go and knock on their pure scientist neighbor’s door, when an application comes up, and ask
‘Is anything like this known?’ And then that pure scientist
will ask his collaborator, and so on and so forth, until a connection is made.
Making these connections across disciplines, pure and
applied, often requires deep knowledge and creativity — it
is almost never as simple as a straight look-up in a dictionary or encyclopedia.
India’s needs are often quite different than those of the
rest of the world, as India has its own unique problems that
only exist in India and are not foremost in the minds of
developed countries.
That’s why it is important for India to have its own network of scientists and their repertoire of research, both
pure and applied, so that they can all work together to
make the fundamental creative breakthroughs and connections that will be needed to solve India’s problems in the
decades to come.
The family has been your mainstay, with many relatives
even joining you at the International Congress of
Mathematicians in Seoul. Given that many mathematicians
and philosophers are solitary people, how does family nourish you?
The solitary mathematician or philosopher is a prevalent
stereotype, though I’m not sure to what extent it’s actually
true! :)
My family has always been so inspirational and supportive, and has always taken so much interest in what I do
with such enthusiasm (like coming to the ICM in Seoul!).
My family’s support has always been a major source of
encouragement for me as well as a major
source of strength.
Also, much of what I’ve learned over the
years is through my family, particularly my
grandparents and my mother and uncle.
How much time do you get to spend with
your mother and other members of the family, given how much busier you have
become? How do you spend time with family?
I have always spent a lot of time with
4M28
family, especially when I was growing up,
although over the last year or two it has

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Why should one study math?
Math plays a role in all the technology
around us. It’s very important to the
advancement of our society. But, of course,
pure mathematicians are not thinking
about the applications when they’re doing
their mathematics. I mean, in every single
advance in technology that advances society
mathematics is playing an increasingly central role.
Of course, the next question would be:
‘Why should we not just only fund and
encourage applied mathematics. Why do
we think about just mathematics questions
for their own sake?’
The answer there is that most of the
applicable mathematics that has been discovered over the centuries was discovered
not because the discoverer was thinking
about the applications, but because they
were just doing what they found most
beautiful, most exciting, most promising.
They could never have imagined the applications that it would eventually (result in).
A large part of the mathematics that is
eventually applied is found because of what
the scientists found the most fundamental
purely from a knowledge point of view, not
because they were thinking of the applications. In fact, most likely, no one would
have thought of that particular way of
doing things if they were just thinking
about the applications.
That does not happen (only) in mathematics; that happens throughout the sciences. Lots of fundamental discoveries are
made not when they were thinking about
the applications, but just because they were
so fundamental to science.
MRIs (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
was discovered because people were doing
space exploration. They wanted to know
about our universe — and the side effect
was this very important invention.
Number theory… is fun and beautiful and
has just fundamental questions about basic
numbers that we use every day. Of course
now, number theory plays such an important role in coding theory and cryptography
and computers in general.
It’s important for people to fund and for
people to pursue not just science for applications sake but science for science’s sake.
So when the government decides how to
fund scientists in India — it’s happening in
the US now as austerity increases — people
look at the short term and say, ‘We need to
fund just the applied sciences.’ But in the
long term it’s very important to fund basic
science because we really need to build a
nice repertoire of basic science.
What is the beauty of math — the kind
that often lies in the eye of the mathematical
beholder that eludes a great many others?
We all know 2+2=4, so why do we need a
proof to show the obvious?
In school, mathematics is taught as,
‘Here’s an artificial-sounding problem and
here are the steps that you should memo-

Math, through Manjul’s eyes
Music, nature, poetry, math and Manjul
Bhargava at the National Museum of
Mathematics.
P RAJENDRAN

rize that will allow you to solve it.’ There’s
no indication of why these steps came into
being, why they work, why they could be
important to another problem. It’s just,
‘here’s the kind of problem, and here are
the steps.’ You learn by rote to solve it, and I
totally agree there’s nothing terribly beautiful about that.
This is one reason why I didn’t particularly like mathematics class when I was growing up. I would do anything I could to get
out of that mathematics class. That wasn’t
the mathematics I enjoyed.
Research mathematics is very different
than the mathematics that we do in school.
First of all, the problems come about
because… of artistic reasons. They have an
inherent beauty that you don’t (see). If people haven’t experienced that in school it’s
very hard to explain.
Research mathematicians’ problems
come about for artistic reasons, because
they’re beautiful or they come about
because there’s a real-life application, which
is also very beautiful and exciting. To go
about solving it you don’t solve knowing
someone solved it before. It’s not about rote
memorization of some procedure that
someone invented; it’s about applying creativity to come up with a new way of attacking the problem. It’s like solving a puzzle.
It’s like putting together ideas, interacting
with others, and bouncing ideas off one
another it fits together in this way that
exactly gives the answer to the problem.
It’s kind of like when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle. Everything comes together

until it makes a pretty picture in the end.
That’s the kind of feeling you get in
research mathematics... You never get to
see that the way mathematics is taught in
school, which is unfortunate.
(In) research mathematics, the process
feels much more similar to solving a jigsaw
puzzle or the making of a painting or composing a musical piece. The feeling that you
get is much more similar to (those). That’s
the kind of feeling we should try to evoke
when teaching mathematics in school. It’s
going to take some effort (a pained chortle).
Why is the focus not on application but on
just learning? Does not that make math
seem an ivory-tower exercise?
I think it is important about people to
think about it as a pure subject. Better not
to think about it as ivory-tower exercise.
Anybody can engage in it if they want to. I
think it’s important that people do it even if
it doesn’t seem immediately applicable. As
I’ve said earlier, it’s important for people to
think about it and build a repertoire of
basic mathematics, of basic science, even if
it’s not being used yet... You may not have
the time to think about it at that point
(when a problem arrives).
When the need arises, the repertoire of
basic science, basic mathematics should be
there so that it can be tapped into.
Even if that is not used yet. Even if you
don’t have thousands.
Mathematics throws up a great many possibilities, of which only a few reflect reality.
Given that, is math limited in its ability to
reflect fact?

I don’t think so. Mathematics can be used
to describe all possible universes. Among
them only one of them is the one we have.
Usually experiments decide which one of
those universes is ours. In many cases we’ve
been able to — at least in classical physics
— determine which universe is ours. Then
there’s the whole next level, which is called
String Theory. String Theory has also
described possible universes. Unfortunately,
we don’t yet have any experiments to decide
which one of those universes is ours.
No experiments yet, you mean...
That’s more a limit not of the mathematics but (that we can’t) do experiments.
There are experiments proposed that one
day may be possible to do. But we’ve now
reached the point where it’s a limit on the
experimental abilities. But once we’re able
to do those experiments, this will confirm
one of those universes as being ours. So it’s
not the math that’s limiting here.
Would you go by the Popperian idea that
math, while one of science’s main tools, is
not a science by itself?
Math has aspects of both art and science
in it, depend on what you’re doing. There’s
a whole new area of mathematics called
experimental mathematics, where you do
computer experiments to make predictions.
Instead of about our universe, they’re about
numbers. Prime numbers should have this
property... These are things you can do lots
of experiments on.
Computers are so powerful. You can gather data the same way that the sciences gather data about the universe. There’s a lot of
data that’s yet to be explained by theory. So
part of mathematics is becoming just like
an experimental science, where you do
experiments, you gather data, and look
through the theories to explain them, and
then maybe even try to prove those theories. So in that sense there’s a whole area of
mathematics that is very much like a science, that’s like an experimental science,
not a theoretical science. n
In this conversation last year Manjul
Bhargava, the R Brandon Fradd
Professor of Mathematics at Princeton
University and winner of the 2014
Fields Medal, explained the beauty of
math and why it is not an ivory-tower
exercise. This was first published in
India in New York.
He spoke to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M25

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Mira Bhargava
Mother

M

‘He has made it his mission to
inspire and encourage the youth to
take up math and pure sciences’

anjul is a very kind, generous, loving and compassionate person who has always
placed everyone’s needs
before his own and is forever
eager to help anyone and everyone.
He is as amazingly good with children and
elders as he is with his peers. He is also a very
happy and cheerful person who can bring a
smile on anyone’s face with his charming
manner and sweet sense of humor.
One other personality trait that he has is his
concern for the environment – he uses paper
sparingly because producing paper means
destroying trees. He meticulously finds every
piece of recyclable material around him and
makes sure it goes in the recycle bin, and is
very conscious of his duties as a citizen. In
particular, he makes every family member
exercise his/her right to vote and fulfill
his/her responsibility as a citizen of a democratic society.
I mention the latter because of a small incident a few years ago. Manjul had gone to
India to spend some months at IIT-Bombay.
On the last day of his visit there he worked all
day with colleagues until the time of his flight
back to the US. I was waiting for him with
dinner all ready, thinking he must be very
tired and hungry after his hard last day in
India and a 20-hour journey.
The day happened to be the Presidential
Election Day and as much as I wanted to go
to vote that day I just couldn’t make it.
Manjul arrived in the evening from the airport by taxi and I welcomed him at the door
dreaming of serving him dinner right away.
But he seemed extremely rushed, didn’t take
one step inside the house, left his suitcase at the door and
said, ‘Let’s go,’ and ran towards the car.
I shouted ‘Where?’
And he shouted back, ‘To vote.’
I said, ‘The polls are closed,’ and he said, ‘There are still
15 minutes. Let’s hurry.’
I quickly put my shoes on and ran to the car and we
made it there in time to cast our votes. But I kept wondering that while in India all this time, how did he ever manage to remember the day of voting and the exact times of
the closing of polls back in New York!
Being in the field of education and being well versed in
its intricacies, he has been making arduous efforts to fulfill his grand visions and his keen desire to make education, particularly math education, available to those talented youth in India who do not have an opportunity and
access to it.
One small attempt he made at contributing to this cause
was when he received the Clay Research Award.
With the help of the Clay Institute he channeled the
award he received from them to be given to the
Ramanujan Mathematical Society for three years for giving scholarships to needy and deserving students in India
to pursue graduate studies in mathematics.
He is a great supporter of research in pure sciences and
believes that the advances in pure sciences are important
as they eventually find applications in engineering, medicine and other fields that benefit society. With this con-

Manjul and Mira Bhargava
with Emory University
mathematician Parimala
Raman.
COURTESY: THE BHARGAVAS

cern for the good of humankind and their future he has
made it his mission to inspire and encourage the youth of
India to take up math and pure sciences.
The Fields Medal has been very helpful in this regard as
it has provided him with a platform to spread this message to school children as well as college students who
flocked by the thousands to listen to him speak at various
educational institutes in India last winter. He plans many
more such visits to inspire students and make them passionate about going into math and science for bringing
India at par with other developed nations.
But the Fields Medal has also come at a price. With
more than 30,000 e-mails that Manjul has received by
now and more coming in at an ever-increasing pace, he
has struggled to even read them all, let alone respond to
them. He wants to reply to all of them personally, but
with this volume of e-mail he misses reading even some of
the most urgent ones. There are invitations for speaking,
visiting, awards, honorary degrees, commencement
speeches, and more from around the world but many go
unnoticed and unanswered until it is too late.
Just recently I learned about a funny comment from the
director of IIT-Madras who very persuasively invited
Manjul some months ago to give a commencement speech
and receive an honorary degree at their convocation this
year. Manjul was initially very reluctant to accept as he
was constantly traveling during that time but the director
insisted on the grounds that this would inspire thousands

of young students who will be
there on the occasion. That
was something that touched
Manjul and he agreed to
make time to be there for one
day. After that weeks passed
and more e-mails kept coming from IIT-Madras to work
out the logistics of his visit.
But, of course, with hundreds of e-mails in his inbox
coming in every day he
missed reading them.
Manjul finally found those
e-mails and answered. The
director responded with an
opening line with good
humor that he was so worried
when he didn’t hear from
Manjul after so many
attempts to get in touch with
him that he was just getting
ready to contact the FBI!
The most debilitating affect that the Fields Medal has
had on him is that with so many people and so many
institutions and organizations putting a demand on his
time he has not been able to pursue what he loves to do
most, which is his math research.
Tons of his ideas in his head are waiting to be explored,
but he is caught up in the race by everyone trying to get
some time from him. He feels the pull from all sides and
is virtually exhausted by the never ending travels and
phone calls and e-mails that he is trying to keep up with
all his might and yet unable to do so.
I hope sometime soon this frenzy will slow down and he
will be able to lead a normal life.
As for family he has little time for us either these days. I
teach and live in New York and he is in Princeton. So my
contact with Manjul most of the days is only on the
phone, which ends up being a very short call of two minutes, maybe three.
There is so much I want to tell him, but that is the post
Fields Medal life. It is more so this way because he is not
just an American but an American with close ties to India
and Indians and India Abroad, all of whom he loves so
much and wants to contribute to them all. And really I
don’t mind as I also want to do the same! n
Mira Bhargava is Professor of Mathematics at Hofstra
University.
She responded by email to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M26

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Mark Mitton
Magician and collaborator

Yamatarajabhanasalagam!

Manjul Bhargava is a magical creature.
Yamatarajabhanasalagam is a magic
word that was taught to Manjul as part of
his Sanskrit training by his grandfather.
After learning the language and many
poems, this word allowed him to make
sure that he was saying the poem as it was
originally intended by its creator a long
time ago.
Then he played the rhythms of these
poems on his tabla with his grandmother
who played the sitar and sang. This was
done over many years with playful joy and
profound thoroughness.
Manjul’s mother, a math professor in
North America, worked with her parents
back home on the best way to raise her
son.
Out of this challenge, wonder was born.
What they created together was an
extraordinary education for an extraordinary boy that allowed him to not only connect to the wisdom of his family, but to
feel a direct connection to the wisdom of
his culture contained in its language, poetry, music and philosophy.
Twice a year, Manjul returned to Jaipur
to study and play with his grandparents.
Sanskrit poetry with his grandfather, and
music with his grandmother. This was the
foundation for Manjul to learn math,
magic and develop a deep curiosity for the other aspects of
this ancient knowledge that were either lost or at least not
well understood .
In the midst of this path, Manjul discovered magic in the
world around him as a boy in Long Island, New York. At
first quite literally at nursery school, his teacher, Uncle
Frank, shoved a coin into his own forehead and then made
it appear in the ear of his classmate. Manjul thought to
himself this does not follow the normal patterns. On television, he saw the spectacular illusions of David Copperfield.
At the library there was a table of old books and magazines including Scientific American on sale for ten cents
each. There he discovered Martin Gardner’s mathematical
games columns. Then he found Gardner’s books like The
Incredible Dr Matrix.
He learned math tricks like finding the cube root of sixdigit numbers and multiplying any three-digit number by
any other three-digit number. Then he played with the 15puzzle. The 15 pieces on a four-by-four grid allows one to
slide the pieces all around, they are scrambled, and the
challenge is to slide the 15 pieces back in order.
Next, after the 15-puzzle, was the much more complex
challenge: The Rubik’s Cube, but in time, he mastered this
as well.
In Gardner’s description of Dr Matrix, Manjul found a
way to think about the symmetry of the cube. It was a beautiful idea that he would later discover was not quite true,
but by then, he had embraced a way of thinking that
allowed him to look for this beauty.
Manjul’s love of poetry kept growing and his grandfather
pointed out that by knowing the poetry, he had already
learned some fascinating aspects of math. By the age of
eight, he stacked oranges according to the multi-dimensional patterns from the poetry. He started experimenting
with objects in space to represent the rhythms and relationships from the poetry. The stack of oranges resulted in an

A magical class with Manjul Bhargava.
COURTESY: THE BHARGAVAS

Manjul can be quite the wizard for students and
colleagues alike.
COURTESY: MARK MITTON

insight into a mathematical theorem.
Poetry had become Manjul’s passion and inspiration
which influenced many aspects of his life.... Music… Math…
Magic. And the way he approached things.
The boy graduated from high school early at 14, and went
on to Harvard where real magic happened in one week in
his junior year. One of his professors was Persi Diaconis, the
mathematician and statistician... and master magician who
did something that felt quite right to Manjul.
Professor Diaconis would use cards, dice, coins and other
props to not only do magic, but also to think about and play
with ideas of math and statistics. This made him feel right
at home because this was the way that Manjul used poetry.
When Persi Diaconis found out about Manjul’s passion,
he asked his student if he knew anything about the magic

word yamatarajabhanasalagam, and how
it was related to De Bruijn sequences.
Manjul started expressing the ancient
knowledge that was simply an integrated
part of him. Now Persi was thrilled and
showed him a card trick that he had created using this sequence. The math, magic
and poetry were starting to mix at a new
level.
Next, Persi brought his colleague Barry
Mazur to hear Manjul’s insights, and the
three of them worked and played with the
possibilities to push the boundaries of
math. That week was astounding. It was
extraordinary, but in a way, it has become a
regular occurrence.
The first time I presented in Manjul’s
Math and Magic freshman seminar class at
Princeton, I was part of a team with the
mathematician John Conway and the
young twin artists, Ryan and Trevor Oakes.
We met the whole class for dinner, then
had a three-hour class, and everyone
stayed over for a half hour. Once we started, it was hard to stop.
There was math, magic, art, puzzles, music, poetry and
more. It felt like a party or an art happening, more than a
class. We were all working with coins, paper and pipe
cleaners, and the ideas, techniques and secrets were flowing.
Manjul was like the calm captain who accepts waves of
any size, which allowed us all to enjoy our dynamic voyage.
His calm comes from a profound place, because his inner
world is vast, yet he is a keen observer and communicator.
Among Manjul’s gifts and passions is the ability to express
math as an art as only a master craftsman can.
He hopes to help transform math education and even the
way we think of mathematics. Seeing him in action suggests
that he might have found the right combination of art,
poetry and magic to make such a lasting transformation for
mathematics.
If you enter a class taught by Manjul Bhargava, you can
see him embrace the gifts of his students as he stretches
them most gently as he was taught by his mother, her parents and many great teachers along that boy’s path.
Now the boy is a great master and teacher, but if you
spend any time with him you realize that he is still a student and a guardian of knowledge and a way of education
from another time that is real magic.
So learn the secret magic word... yamatarajabhanasalagam and enter Manjul’s magical world. n
Mark Mitton has performed in Europe and Asia, at the
Olympic Games, in war-torn Liberia, and in hospital wards
around New York City.As a magic and special effects consultant, he has made Will Smith appear in the middle of Times
Square, directed an opening circus for Aerosmith, and created special effects for Tony Shalhoub, Stanley Tucci, John
Travolta and John Lithgow.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M27

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M28

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M22
Manjul Bhargava
become much harder given that I
am always on the road! But I do
get to see many of them when I
travel — sometimes they join me
on tour stops, or I try to arrange
tour stops in cities where they are.
Hopefully, as things calm down a
bit again, I will get to see more of
them again!
You have done fantastic work —
and been, correctly enough,
rewarded for it. Do you know
examples of other thinkers — not
necessarily mathematicians — who
have broken new ground and yet
perhaps not received their due?
I think there are many. Often it
is only the last stroke of the hammer on the nail that is recognized,
and so we sometimes forget the
many thinkers who laid the foundations. Others are not recognized
for political or other reasons, while
for still other thinkers, their work
is not appreciated in their own
time and its importance only gets
recognized later.
But by and large, the scientific
community is a merit-based one,
especially in today’s world, and
most important work gets appreciated and recognized by the community, even if not by the publicat-large.
Do you have any plans to write a
book on popular mathematics for
the lay public?
Yes, definitely! Probably not very
soon, but that is definitely in the
plans.
What are your future plans?
I plan to continue to do what
I’ve been doing — teaching,
research, visiting scientific institutes, writing, music, and magic —
but, in addition, I also hope to use
the new opportunities presented
to me to do something for education around the world, and in particular in North America and
India. This has definitely become
one of my core passions.n

SPECIAL AWARDS
ISSUE
EDITOR:
MONALI SARKAR
DESIGNED BY
DOMINIC XAVIER

Manjul Bhargava
and Rohan
Murthy after the
former addressed
students on the
wonders and
values of
mathematics in
Bengauluru in
January this year.
MANJUNATH
KIRAN/AFP/GETTY
IMAGES

‘He carries his accomplishments
so lightly on his shoulders’
Rohan Murty
Friend and collaborator

I

have known Manjul well for a couple
of years now. I am fortunate to call
him a friend. I count myself among
one of his many admirers. Manjul
and I share a passion for India’s
intellectual history. It is through this
that I have gotten to know him well.
Manjul has an incredible passion and emotional attachment to India, its history, culture, and people. He wears his identity — of
being ethnically Indian with so much pride
that I think he ends up setting an example of
how you choose to root yourself, your culture, and your family is as relevant as where
you are born, if not more.
His pride in India and its culture manifests itself with how he interacts with India
both professionally and personally.
On the professional front he has several
collaborators and connections with other
mathematicians in India. He visits India a
couple of times a year to visit various institutes across the country and talks to their
students.
He serves as the chairman of the new
GYAAN initiative, which aims to encourage

scientists of repute to spend time in India
with faculty of students. He also serves on
the advisory boards of a couple of institutes
in India.
Manjul and I often discuss what we can do
to add value to students, institutions, and
faculty in India and in all our discussions he
is tremendously enthusiastic and is willing to
pull out all the stops. In every single transaction or discussion, the common invariant is
this — Manjul keeps thinking of what he can
do to add value to India and actually does it.
I believe his passion for India comes from
the same place his mathematics comes from
— from a place far deep within him. He has
inherited this passion from two important
influences in his life — his mother (who too
is a mathematician with deep roots in India)
and his late grandfather (who was a Sanskrit
scholar at Rajasthan university).
Hence, to Manjul there are no pretensions
of being ethnically Indian and having been
born abroad. He is very clear. He is culturally
Indian and he very proud of it. We often discuss India’s intellectual contributions to
mankind and what is clear is that Manjul
draws tremendous pride and strength from
what this great civilization once produced
and consequently this gives him the confi-

dence and belief that it can be one of the
great civilizations of history once again.
I believe this sort of pride — rooted in fact
and history — is a lesson for many young
Indians to realize that we all come from a
land of genuine accomplishments and draw
strength in our potential future.
On a very personal level, Manjul emulates
the best traits of some of the most accomplished and secure people I have met — he
makes everybody around him feel good. He
carries his accomplishments so lightly on his
shoulders that it is easy to often lose him in a
crowd and even when you find him you’d
think you are talking to a shy undergraduate
student!
There is nobody too big or small for him.
He listens to you carefully and makes you
feel heard. I have witnessed this with him
repeatedly over the past couple of years when
I see him interact with people from different
walks of society and ages in India. n
Rohan Murty is a junior fellow at the
Harvard Society of Fellows and the driving
force behind the Murty Classical Library of
India, the launch of which was attended by Dr
Manjul Bhargava.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M29

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘Manjul has the Midas
touch in mathematics’
Benedict Gross
Professor

I

met Manjul when he was an undergraduate at
Harvard.

He roomed with two other exceptional mathematicians, Kiran Kedlaya and Lenny Ng, and they became
best friends. Manjul and I share a lot of interests
besides mathematics — like playing music, Tetris, and
tennis, and over the years we have also become good
friends.
Manjul has the Midas touch in mathematics — anything he touches turns into gold. His thesis, which
gives a reformulation of Gauss’s famous composition
law for binary quadratic forms, was exceptionally
beautiful. What was more important was that he was
able to put this result into a larger context, and found
many generalizations of it, parametrizing cubic, quartic and quintic rings.
This was the work of a master, but the passage from
this work to the study of the Selmer groups of elliptic
curves (jointly with his student Arul Shankar) was a
real stroke of genius. When Manjul first told me about
his results, they were so striking and original that I
had a hard time understanding exactly what he had
done. Since then there have been generalizations to
curves of higher genus and the theory appears as a
natural continuation of his previous work. n

‘Manjul is committed
to popularizing
contributions from
India in mathematics’

Benedict Gross is George Vasmer Leverett Professor
of Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics,
Harvard University. He was Manjul Bhargava’s professor
at Harvard and delivered the laudation for Dr Bhargava
when he received the Fields Medal.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

‘Manjul is important to
making our department
one of the best in the world’
Peter Sarnak,
Colleague and mentor

I

can confirm that Manjul has not
changed in any noticeable way
after having received the Fields
Medal. He continues to produce new
and exciting research. He is laid back
and positive about everything, just as
he was before.
Probably the most apparent
change is that he is traveling to lecture and visit places around the
world. He used to do that before but
it appears now to be quite a bit

more.
He hasn’t let this affect his
research, but we do see him a little
less in Princeton. He is of course one
of the stars in our department and as
such and because of many other
things that he does, he is important
to making our department one of the
best in the world. n
Peter Sarnak is the Eugene
Higgins Professor of Mathematics at
Princeton University.
He responded by email to P
Rajendran.

Manjul Bhargava, back row, second from left, as a student at Princeton.
MATH.PRINCETON.EDU

Spenta Wadia
Theoretical physicist

M

anjul Bhargava,
while visiting the
Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research a
few years ago, walked into
my office and said that he
would like to be associated
with TIFR’s upcoming
International Center for
Theoretical Sciences in
Bangalore. I was a bit taken
aback by this very young
and brilliant mathematician
who wanted to be involved
with ICTS, which is a new
initiative in Indian science.
Since then he has been
working closely with the
Center as a member of its

International Advisory
Board and is an active participant in its activities and
especially in growing a
math unit at the ICTS with
the theme ‘mathematics
beyond boundaries.’
Manjul has an accurate
knowledge of the history of
mathematics. He has deep
roots in India and he is very
committed to popularizing
the great civilizational contributions from India in
mathematics, and also
spreading far and wide,
especially to young students, the message that
mathematics pervades all
the sciences, and it is a legacy of humanity across geographical and cultural

boundaries.
Given his achievement
and unique talent as an
expositor of ideas of mathematics, Manjul is to lead the
government of India’s GIAN
initiative that plans to invite
mathematicians and scientists to India on short-term
teaching visits. He himself
will teach at IIT-Kharagpur
and IIT-Bombay. n
Spenta Wadia is
Distinguished Professor at
Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research, Mumbai, and the
first director of the
International Center for
Theoretical Science.
He responded by email to
P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M30

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
‘I was alternately
amazed by his
brilliance and his
kindness’
Shreyas Lakhtakia

Student

I

Manjul Bhargava was the rock star at the International Congress of Mathematics last year.
ICM2014.ORG

‘He is using his credibility to
change the way math is taught’
Aryaman Jalota
Student

I

first met Professor Bhargava when I
was on a visit to the United States in
primary school. He knows my father
(musician Anup Jalota) well, and we
played video games together at the time.
Fate placed me in his class,
Mathematics of Magic Tricks and Games,
at Princeton University this spring. His
class was by far the best I have taken,
and shows how dedicated Professor
Bhargava is to his cause: Changing the
way mathematics is taught.

Instead of a typical problem-solution
oriented class, he taught us various theorems through magic tricks, usually card
tricks, to show us that mathematics is a
beautiful and artistic subject. He encouraged creativity by making us come up
with our own variations to the wellknown tricks he taught in class.
The two qualities of Professor Bhargava
that I admire most are his humility and
nobility. Despite having won the Fields
Medal, he is a very approachable and
accessible professor. He responded
enthusiastically whenever I sought assistance from him outside of class, and even

made time for a meal with me.
Perhaps the most admirable trait of his,
however, is use of his newfound eminence. He is using his recently attained
authority and credibility to change the
way mathematics is taught at Princeton
and in India. This shows that Professor
Bhargava is not only a great mathematician and professor, but also a noble
human being at heart. n
Aryaman Jalota is an undergraduate
student at Princeton University.
He responded by email to P
Rajendran.

’d first heard of Professor Manjul
Bhargava as a high-schooler in India,
where he was a popular name among
my math club friends. So when I noticed a
full week into spring semester classes that
he was teaching a seminar on the
Mathematics of Magic Tricks and Games, I
was eager to take the class, and was welcomed into the class by him, despite being
a full week behind.
This was my introduction to his kindness
and gentle persuasion — something so
remarkable, yet rare, even in a worldrenowned faculty and professors.
From that moment forth, the seminar
was equal parts fascinating mathematics
and a chance to work closely with someone
who was clearly among the world’s leading
number theorists, and somehow an even
better person.
Over the course of the semester, I was
alternately amazed by his brilliance and his
kindness, patience and incredible humility.
The course itself was excellent, and
extremely interesting. We covered card
tricks, shuffles, rope tricks, classical music,
but also prime numbers, modular arithmetic and counting. It was a great match
between theory and applications — and
such entertaining ones at that!
Professor Bhargava also organized for
excellent visitors from magicians to mathematicians, that made for a very wholesome
class experience.
He organized a class trip to the Museum
of Magic in New York, on which we were
also joined by an alum from the class from
a few years ago. Such is his dedication to
students that he’s been in touch with students from years ago.
The amount of interest he took in the
class and in all of us is made clear by his
open dinner invitation to us to join him,
each week before class.
Two years on, while I might not be able to
demonstrate the sequence behind the shuffling trick I learnt, or the mathematics
behind it, I will never forget how inspired I
left the classroom each Monday night.
Shreyas Lakhtakia is a student at
Princeton University.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

‘Manjul has an
extraordinary vision of
the future of mathematics’
Andrew Granville
Mathematician

M

anjul Bhargava has an
extraordinary vision of the
future of mathematics.
Coming from a profound understanding of the tools of 200 years ago,
Manjul applies the latest ideas in
algebra and geometry to gain extraordinary insight. Not only to questions
posed today, but to questions that
have been around for all of those 200
years. He has developed his own way
to think about some of the hardest
questions today, yet grounded very
much in the richness of ideas past, so
that his approaches are at once easier,
while being more penetrating than
almost anyone else’s.
Dealing with Manjul is a delight. He
is very generous with his colleagues,
and kind in his dealings. Many people
who think as fast and as deeply as

Manjul, show their disappointment
when us mere mortals try to explain
our ideas, but Manjul humbly tries to
find the strength in what you say so
that you go away enriched, encouraged and on track.
He has the most extraordinary track
record with doctoral students, better
than many who have been in the top
flight for twice as long as him. Also,
now that women are increasingly
playing an important role in mathematics, quite a few of the emerging
female stars of the subject worked on
their first deep research project under
the guidance of Manjul Bhargava.
Andrew Granville is Professor of
Mathematics, University of Montreal.
He is one of the organizers of a
conference in Montreal last year on Dr
Manjul Bhargava’s mathematicalwork.
He responded by email
to P Rajendran.

‘Manjul’s mathematical
work is stunningly original
and revolutionary’
Henri Darmon
Mathematician

I

ndeed, I have known Manjul for quite
some time. If my recollections are correct,
I first met him 20 years ago, in 1995, at a
mathematics conference (his mother was
there too, and she introduced him to me: she
had done a postdoc at McGill in previous
years, and had kept closed ties with some of
my colleagues there, notably Jim Lambek
who was also close to Manjul’s family).
Regarding Manjul’s mathematical work, I
can only repeat what you will hear from many
other sources I am sure: It is stunningly original and revolutionary.
One of Manjul’s strengths is the way in
which he is able to bring a completely fresh
perspective to the questions he considers, and
completely reinvent subjects that had been
intensely studied since the times of Gauss.
Manjul’s work and mathematical style
brings to my mind the following quote of
Grothendieck (another mathematical giant
who passed away recently):

Le petit enfant découvre le monde comme il
respire — le flux et le reflux de sa respiration
lui font accueillir le monde en son être délicat,
et le font se projeter dans le monde qui l’accueille. L’adulte aussi découvre, en ces rares
instants où il a oublié ses peurs et son savoir,
quand il regarde les choses ou lui-même avec
des yeux grands ouverts, avides de connaître,
des yeux neufs — des yeux d’enfant.
(The small child discovers the world while it
breathes — the ebb and flow of its breathing
bring the world into its delicate self, and projects it back into the world, which is its host.
The adult also engages in discovery, in those
rare moments where he forgets his fears and
his knowledge, when he looks at the things or
him, with eyes wide open, eager to discover
with new eyes — the eyes of a child.) n
Henri Darmon is James McGill Professor of
Mathematics, McGill University. He is one of the
organizers of a conference in Montreal last
year on Dr Manjul Bhargava’s mathematical
work.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M33

THE BARD
FROM
BROOKLYN
‘It is not necessary that one has to have a traumatic life
to be an artist. That is a romantic model of artistry. I
never really bought the romantic model of an artist and
never will. One of the things that protected me was being
an immigrant and being an Indian. I didn’t feel I had the
freedom to kind of live a wild life.’
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay Seshadri, winner of the
Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence, speaks to
Arthur J Pais.

Presented by

VIJAY

SESHADRI

PUBLISHER’S
SPECIAL AWARD FOR
EXCELLENCE 2014
For his compelling verse; for a
voice that sears the soul; for
being a poet extraordinaire.

PARESH GANDHI

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M34

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

After college, the first thing Vijay Seshadri tried to do was write a novel. It proved to be unsuccessful, not necessarily because he couldn’t write a novel but because, he
has said, his ‘life was so crazy in those days.’
COURTESY: THE SESHADRIS

‘M

om, don’t worry, I will be No 1.’ Vijay
Seshadri’s promise to his mother —
who was worried when he chose to
study literature — had been taking
shape for a long time.
He became a popular lecturer at Sarah Lawrence College;
his poems were published in The New Yorker.
His poem Disappearances, which ran on the back cover of
The New Yorker in the aftermath of 9/11 made him controversial and noteworthy in an instant.
Written before terror struck the Twin Towers, it echoed
the tragedy of 9/11 and included the chaos surrounding the
assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.
Alice Quinn, then poetry editor of The New Yorker, wrote
an article in which she quoted a passage from the poem:
This is you at the doorway, unobserved, while your
aunts and uncles keen over the body.
This is your first river, your first planetarium, your
first Popsicle.

THE BARD FROM
BROOKLYN
The cold and brilliant day in six-color prints — but
the people on the screen are black and white.
Your friend’s mother is saying,
Hush, children! Don’t you understand history is being
made?
You do, and you still do. Made and made again.
When the Pulitzer Prize came in 2014, it vindicated the
promise Seshadri had made to his mother: ‘I will be No. 1.’
“He was reading a lot, especially poetry, since 7,” says
mother Champaka Lakshmi Seshadri.
In a previous interview to India Abroad, Vijay
Seshadri explained his devotion to reading in his own

words: “I read almost everything that was put in front of
me as a child. Even when I was in the 5th grade, I was kind
of famous as a reader. When we were living in Columbus,
Ohio, I remember I was given a certificate for having read
the most number of books in elementary school.”
In junior high, he discovered the almanac, which had the
list of the Nobel Prize winners. He would
remember those names and check out their
books.
At 14, he was reading Kafka.
Part of the reason he became a precocious
reader was because he felt socially isolated as a
child growing up in America he told India
Abroad in that interview. He had skipped a couple of grades and was two years younger than
everybody in his class.
The feeling of being chronologically isolated
made him rely on himself. “These days, children 4M35
who are in the condition that I was in then,

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M35

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M34
Vijay Seshadri
have all these other resources that come
from the computer and the Internet:
Games, video games. In those days, no one
watched TV much. Reading was the great
sort of repository of excessive mental energy. I loved it.”
Seshadri’s parents (his father was a chemistry professor at Ohio State) expected him
to study science, but he slowly discovered
his love for poetry and his interest in
fiction.
On graduating from college, the first thing
he tried to do was write a novel. It proved to
be unsuccessful, not necessarily because he
couldn’t write a novel but because his ‘life
was so crazy in those days.’
And crazy it was!
Talking about his journey into poetry, he
told India Abroad after winning the Pulitzer
that after college in Oberlin, Ohio, he
worked as a truck driver, as a floor refinisher, as a bicycle messenger, and did various
jobs in the Bay area. He and his friends
were all artists, surviving in any way they
could in order to pursue art.
It was a time that was very exciting, also
emotionally dramatic. In retrospect, he felt
that if he had been a little more stable, he
Vijay Seshadri is considered a brilliant teacher and a mesmerizing lecturer.
might have continued to write fiction. It was COURTESY: THE SESHADRIS
only when he was about 25, that he rediscovon, he would give advice on literature and explain books to
characters in the play.
ered poetry.
her and so we grew up in an intellectual household.
The couple moved to their present apartment in the fall
At one point, Seshadri even thought of staying in the fishThey were reading Victorian literature in India at that
of 1986 when he was doing his PhD at Columbia. They diding industry where he had worked and had been very
time. He was telling her to read Thomas Hardy, and talking
n’t have much money and he is still amazed how they surhappy, but the love for poetry beckoned harder.
about George Meredith and they went to a lot of plays in
vived at that time.
He then moved to the ‘spectacularly beautiful’ Oregon
Kannada, in Tamil (in India). But he was recommending
Their son Nicholas was born in 1992 and was named
coast and was ‘steeped in the beauty of the landscape, the
her to read English and American authors. To read John
after Susan’s father. Seshadri conceded that since his son
weather and the incredible power of the ocean’. It was an
Dos Passos’s trilogy, for example.
was going to have an Indian last name, he thought his first
experience that somehow felt divine but overwhelmed as he
Those were the kind of books he was telling her to read,
name should come from his wife’s tradition.
was by the love of literature, he decided to apply to college
and also contemporary writers. The milieu I grew up in was
In February 2015, part of the family’s tradition was lost
on the East Coast, he continued in his conversation with
an intellectual one and it was pretty influential. Of course,
when his 90 plus young father Kalkunte Srinivasa Seshadri
India Abroad last year.
the influences of a father are so deep and profound.
died in Pittsburgh.
He then undertook another journey — boarding a bus
In his case, it was very much an ocean of the purity of
When news of the Pulitzer had arrived, the first call that
that took him from Newport on the central Oregon coast to
wealth of the mind as opposed to any other values having to
Vijay Seshadri made was to his parents. He would have
Portland, where he transferred to another Greyhound bus,
do with being rich or famous or anything like that.
been filled with regret and, it wouldn’t nearly have been as
spending three days across the country and arriving at the
My father was very much a part of the history of the
sweet if his father had not lived to see that day. ‘Daddy, you
Port Authority (bus station) in New York City on a swelterIndian Republic in some ways. The same as the history of
and I did this,’ he told Professor K S Seshadri on the phone.
ing day.
his life because he was born right around the time of the
He wrote about his father in The Long Meadow and feels
He went to some friends’ place in Brooklyn, showered
Independence and Quit India movement. Of course, you
he now has to write about his mother and tell her story.
and went to Columbia the following day to register.
can take the actual birth of the Indian Republic rather than
At 85, his mother, who was once hailed as the best Indian
New York came as an incredible shock, he reminisced to
its political birth in 1947 to the years of the early 1920s.
cook in America, is wheelchair bound and doesn’t really
India Abroad last year. This was the New York when trains
He was a part of that Independence generation which
cook any more.
were covered with graffiti and Bryant Park was Needle
really made modern India, especially in the
But she taught her son how to cook; and on the days he’s
Park. He thought it was a really vital and interesting city,
commitment to science and technology. All
visiting — which he does a lot since she is sick — the
but also a dangerous one.
those values were very, very, significant in his
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet cooks for her.
“They hadn’t cleaned it up in the way that they did,”
life.
Your father Professor Kalkunte Srinivasa Seshadri died in
Seshadri told India Abroad last year, “And to suddenly wind
When he died, I arranged the funeral in
February 2015 after a long illness. Let’s talk about the influup in this milieu! It was quite a shock but wonderful! I’m
Pittsburgh and we used a church in the neighence your father had on you and your thoughts on his death.
glad that I came because New York is really a place for the
borhood for his funeral. There were a lot of
My father was a real intellectual of that generation of
young.”
Americans because they had many American
Indian intellectuals. He was a scientist, but he was also
“It is a city of intellectuals,” he continued. “Even the peofriends and there were a lot of Indians because
very interested in literature. And he was an avid play-goer.
ple in finance here tend to be more intellectual. The New
they had a large number of Indian friends.
I was looking at some of the letters he wrote to my mothYork intellectual is a kind of fabled creature.”
It was an open casket. We cremated him the
er when he came here to get his PhD in the 1950s. They are
In the fall of 1984, Vijay Seshadri met his wife Suzanne.
next day and I started the service by playing
filled with advice to her to read this book or that
For their first date they watched the Samuel Beckett play
4M38
the Indian national anthem. Everybody stood
book. They are very, very, touching and he would comment
Endgame and later, named their cats ‘Nagg’ and ‘Nell’ after

M36

Response feature

India Abroad June 19, 2015

From a single car to a fleet
of limos and tour buses
SMALL BUSINESS
Sponsored Feature
Raj Uppal is a New Jersey-based successful limousine
business owner. But he started in the mid-1990s in a
small way and built his business from there.
Uppal talked about the challenges to the limousine business and how he differentiates his operations from new
car companies like Uber.

What is your limousine company called?
I have not one but five companies, including Corporate
Limousine Service Inc, Uniworld Limo and
Transportation. The companies are in based in New
Jersey, New York and California.
When did you start?
I started my first company in 1994.
So when you started then what were the challenges you faced?
Before I started the business, I was a business analyst. I
used to work for a dental product company in Newark,
New Jersey. I started my limousine company with one
car. At that time there weren’t any issues. My credit was
perfectly fine and the bank funding was also easier.
I started with just one car but at one point I had 165 of
them. I was one of the largest limousine operators in the
country at the time.
Right now I have some cars that I own. Sometimes I also
rely on some owner-operator cars.
My company is not like the TLC-run (Taxi and
Limousine Commission-run) radio cars, where most of
the drivers own their cars. I hire the drivers and pay them
myself.
I have my corporate contacts – at places like MTV, Time
Warner, Merill Lynch and also at Indian film production

Former business analyst
Raj Uppal runs flourishing
taxi services in some of the
country’s toughest markets
and distribution companies.
Right now you have all the success, but when
you started with one car, what was the scenario
like then? Was the competition different?
There were not too many limousine companies at the
time. Yes, there were car service companies. And I was
the first Indian to start a limousine company but there
were Indian drivers who used to drive their TLC-operated
cars.
What are the regulations you have to follow to
run your company?
We have to get licensing from the townships. And then
you have to get insurance for $1.5 million.
That’s insurance for the passengers. I suppose if
you have collision insurance, too?
Yes. in New Jersey it is very easy to operate a taxi business in, as it is only state in the country where we don’t
pay sales tax when we buy a car. There are a lot of rules
and regulations in New York, though. But now I know
enough and I also own some buses.
Are these tour buses?
Yes, though for my buses I have to pay a total of $5 million in insurance.
I have limousine and coach buses. I do tours for groups
that come from India.
Are most of your drivers from South Asia?
Very few of my drivers are Indian. Maybe only 5 percent
of my drivers are from India. The rest are Hispanics and
African Americans. I like to be professional. I don’t mind

hiring Indian drivers if they are good. We check all their
background and criminal record.
Are you facing some stiff competition from companies like Uber, Lyft?
Yes, because their prices are lower and because any
driver can work with Uber. It hasn’t affected my business
too much yet because I have a strong client base that has
been with me for a long time.
Also, Uber is in a different business. They only have
cars. They don’t have limos, vans or buses. Therefore, I
ensure I keep the business at the higher end.
I have other big clients though – like Louis Vuitton.
Right now Calvin Klein is in one of my cars in Los
Angeles.

The finer points of setting up your taxi business

Putting together a taxi business involves high startup costs but, with some work,
it can be quite a lucrative business.
But do consider the competition. As Raj Uppal, the taxi firm owner interviewed
above, said, there is competition coming from Uber, Lyft and other firms, many
of which can undercut you quite sharply. Even if you are in an area that they
haven’t come to, do consider if you can get past the shaky startup phase so you
can hope to take them on.
Before testing out your novel ideas, do check out where the taxis in your city are
most active. Check how many are traveling empty – and if there are zones where
potential customers usually wait. Locate the places that customers wait most
fruitlessly. There may be places that the other taxi drivers do not want to go.
Explore every avenue, not because it may lead to profit but to gain a better understanding of what you are getting into.
Ah yes, do ensure you have a commercial driver’s license. Even if you are planning to employ other drivers, it is a good idea to be able to take over in a pinch.
Do check if your town has licencing rules and other regulations for taxis. In
places like New York City, there are also ‘medallion’ costs to keep in mind (it
reached $1.3 million in April 2013 but now, thanks to new competition, it can go
as low as $700,000).

Buy cars that are already modified to be used as taxis, but make sure they are
not so old that you will be spending more on maintenance than you need to.
Among the other things you need to consider before hitting the road are the
insurance and office costs in your area. Depending on where you are, these can
vary significantly. And remember that you need to have enough room to house at
least a modest fleet until it outgrows the space.
Save well before the fact to reduce the loans you take.
Make sure you hire drivers with clean records and, ideally, who are are tolerant, patient and reliable. The last is a particularly useful quality. Check references
from other taxi firms they have worked at. Make sure you make your rules clear
and then stick by them. These include rules about when they come in, how long
before their shift they can drink, and how you will deal with stealing.
If you operate in a small town, ensure that you market your service properly.
Advertise in local papers but also make sure the ads also show up in large supermarket flyers, at bus stations and airports.
Ensure proper communication and the safety of your drivers – who do one of
the most dangerous jobs in the world – by providing them with radios and possibly emergency buttons.
There are always more things to say, but for now, just go and hit the road.

India Abroad June 19, 2015

Response feature

Tips to build a positive brand reputation

achieve this on a consistent basis, you are
able to create customer loyalty, credibility,
and deliver your message clearly.
If for some reason your brand's reputation
has been tarnished — even the slightest bit
— you're at risk of losing current and
potential customers. But, if your reputation remains intact, you have the possibility to earn lifelong customers and fans.
But, before you can preserve your
brand's reputation, you need to build one
up. And here are five tips on how to establish a positive brand reputation.
Be yourself

Whether it's online or offline your brand
is a professional business. It needs to
answer the following questions:
Who are you?
What do you do?
How do you want others to perceive you?
But, how can you answer these questions? The best way is by understanding
the definition of brand, which according to
the American Marketing Association is a
‘name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a
combination of them intended to identify
the goods and services of one seller or
group of sellers and to differentiate them
from those of other sellers.’ When you

M37

Engage with influencers
and the community

Once you have your brand defined, it's
time to get out there and engage with influencers and your specific community.
Social media expert John Rampton says,
‘Use social media to converse with industry
leaders, such as asking questions, adding
your input, sharing their content, or signing up for their newsfeeds. This type of
networking will continue to improve your
credibility and expertise.’
The same could be said about joining communities specific to your niche. You're not
there to make a sales pitch, but rather participate in discussions that build relationships. The idea is to create a contact base
that could lead to further possibilities.
Create compelling and
quality content

You know your brand and are networking with like-minded individuals online,
now what? You want to create content that
is engaging your audience. This will continue to prove that you're an expert and it
should get you recognition. Remember,

you need to create quality content that
your audience will find useful, entertaining, or informative and would be
something that they want to share.
Protect yourself

Make sure you monitor what people
are saying about you online, using
tools from Brandwatch, Hootsuite,
Klout, TweetReach, or Social
Mention. You can also use Google
Alerts to check out what's being said
about your brand. By keeping up on
what's being said about you online,
you can prevent hijackers from tarnishing
your good name.
Keep in mind that no matter how much
you monitor and try to prevent any negative comments, there will always be someone who has something bad to say about
your brand. That's just a fact. So, how will
you react? That's why you need to have a
crisis plan in place prior to a storm of negativity. It's just better safe than sorry.
Don't neglect your offline
reputation as well

While there's a big emphasis on protecting and building a positive online brand
reputation, you can't forget the fact that
there's an offline world. This means that

you have to keep your customers and fan
base happy. Not only will this lead to loyalty or eventually brand advocates, but
word-of-mouth referrals or testimonials
are great for business. For example, 50% of
purchase decisions are influenced by
word-of-mouth.
Make your customers happy by offering
an outstanding customer experience and
they will gladly tell everyone who listens
about how awesome your brand is. If you
notice that there's been a trend of negativity going around, you might have to examine what's the cause. If not, your brand will
be facing a serious reputation problem
both online and offline.
Information courtesy wellsfargoworks.com

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M38

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M36

Vijay Seshadri at home in Brooklyn, the
New York City borough he settled in
after working as a truck driver, a floor
refinisher, a bicycle messenger, and
spending five years in the fishing
industry among other jobs.

Vijay Seshadri
up and people found it very, very, moving.
I thought this would an appropriate tribute to my father. He was a very much a
Western man, a scientist, but very much an
Indian person of the period of Indian
Independence and the formation of the
Republic.
The next day, we did all the rituals we had
to and I cremated him as the eldest son is
supposed to do. Of course, we couldn’t do
that much! Then there was a ritual two
weeks after, which I performed. The oneyear ritual, which we will be very, very, careful about.
They were both very orthodox, even
though my father was pretty much left wing
and he was not interested in religion. But
with my mother, it would have been very
bad if we hadn’t done what we had to do, in
that regard. For the family and for the other
Indian families, they felt it was very important that we do these things.
I wrote a tribute to my father for my second book Long Meadow. I just wrote it for
that book alone. I didn’t publish it. But it’s
in my second volume of The Long
Meadow. I think it’s a great, great, piece
about him. You can get a real sense of how
unusual he was, by reading it.
What did you call your father? Appa or
Dad?
I called him Dad. I used to call him Appa
when I was very little.
How old was your dad? Your mother?
My dad was 90, almost 91. My mother
just turned 85. She is wheelchair bound and
has a host of problems from diabetes to
congestive heart failure. I have a person living there full time, but my sister and I do
everything else: We handle her medication,
take care of her bills.
We have to shop for the family. I have to
take her to her doctor’s appointments.
Basically, I’m living there and commuting to
New York for classes. I’m here this week because it’s graduation week.
Is your mother, Champaka Lakshmi Seshadri, resigned to
her health?
My mother is wheelchair bound. She doesn’t really cook
any more. She taught me how to cook. So I cook for her
when I am there. She is not resigned to her health
issues. Since she’s got congestive heart failure, she can’t
really move very well any more.
She’s old to the extent one can be resigned to dying. So,
that’s what’s happening to her. It’s very sad to see.
I think she had ambitions. She did get a degree. But she
got married and there wasn’t really scope for her to continue. This was in India right after the Second World War —
and, especially in the south in traditional communities.
She always thought she could have had a career and she
didn’t have one. But that’s true of so many women of her
generation. They just wound up being housewives.
You talked about how your mother grew up reading poetry, William Wordsworth, right?
Well, my mother’s family was also very literary. My grand-

PARESH GANDHI

father was the chief engineer for the then Mysore state
(now Karnataka), but he was also a Sanskrit scholar. He
was quite famous for that. That family also had a lot of
music and they were much more religious; my mother
knows all the stories of the Ramayana, she knows all the
myths and stuff like that; she understands all of the rituals.
They were very punctilious in keeping an orthodox
household and she was definitely — it’s not so much that
she was interested in poetry specifically — but she’s a natural artist, the way she cooked.
Indian women of that generation, of course, learned
handicrafts. My mother is a fantastic seamstress. She used
to make all my sister’s clothes when my sister was growing
up. She knits beautiful things, and she’s a champion
quilter.
Later in life she took up quilting and she won all these
blue ribbons at local county fairs for quilting. We have a lot
of blue ribbons around the house. I have about half a dozen
of her quilts and they’re just beautiful.
She was very, very artistic and I think I just got my sensibilities from her (if you know that term). She was always

considered to be the best Indian cook in
America. She’s very, very, artistic in her
cooking and it’s very, very complicated,
south Indian cooking.
Her father was wealthy enough, so he
would have her cook and he would hire
Udipis (cooks) to cook for him. She learned
all the Iyengar dishes from the Udipi
cooks. Her handicrafts and cooking became
part of suburban America.
My parents came here so early that they
didn’t have the benefit of an Indian community to reinforce cultural practices. They
were pretty much isolated and adapted to
the world around them.
You are very much a product of the rebellious 1960s. Many of the writers of that period were self destructive. How did you stay
different from those writers?
First of all, it is not necessarily that one
has to have a traumatic life in order to be an
artist. That is a romantic model of
artistry. That’s not really played out in history when one understands history.
Artists are emotional and they tend to be
a little more reckless and adventurous than
other people, but that doesn’t necessarily
mean that they have to be self destructive. Of course, there is a tremendous history
of artists to have had productive and normal social lives who made great art.
I never really bought the romantic model
of an artist and never will be. I grew up in
the ‘60s and identified with some of those
writers to a certain extent. Certainly Gary
Snyder was an important writer for me. But
I never saw them as models for my life.
One of the things that protected me was
being an immigrant and being an Indian. I
simply didn’t feel I had the freedom to kind
of live a wild life. I led a pretty adventurous life: I worked
five years in the commercial fishing industry on the northwest coast and I hitchhiked across America many times.
But even when I did those things, I was always pretty stable and I cared for adventure. I didn’t care for drugs or I
wasn’t interested in self destruction or anything like that.
So when I came back to New York, it was inevitable —
the sobriety an immigrant’s life will provide an immigrant
because you are a stranger in a strange land
and you can’t really take risks with your life
that other people are willing to take. You
should have a degree of care and concern
about your sanity.
I certainly have friends, people who are close
to me, who have gone down those destructive
paths. But I never followed any of them.
Good for you, good for us, and good for the
writing world!
Yeah!
4M39
What are some of the significant things that
have happened to you after the Pulitzer Prize?

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M39

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M38
Vijay Seshadri
I’m reading and giving a lecture at Oxford soon. That’s
very recent. I gave the key note address at the Jaipur
Literary Festival. I also went to Bombay and read there. In
America, I’ve given about 30 readings in the past nine
months or so.
I’ve gone all over the country and the most recent thing
that happened is the American Academy of Arts and
Letters giving me one of their awards. They are the most
elite literary institution in the country. That’s quite an
honor.
A lot of good things have happened. I was on the PBS
News Hour. I was interviewed for the largest English language Chinese cable TV network in the world. Other than
that, it’s just been giving readings in academic institutions. It’s been a lot of fun.
A lot of people may not know your knowledge of prose,
your knowledge of French, your knowledge of Urdu poetry.
I was actually in a PhD program at Columbia and I studied Urdu and Persian. I lived in Lahore. I was supposed to
be there for a year, but I left after half a year because I really wanted to go back to America.
I didn’t want to pursue a PhD, I didn’t want to write the
dissertation when I was there. But I learnt a lot of Urdu
and, of course, French and Spanish, those are just languages I know from the time I was a child.
I read a lot of European poetry. I don’t read much in
Spanish. But I read in French. And that’s just sort of my
American background. It’s great. Those are the languages I
took when I was in high school and I continue pursuing
and enjoying them.

Below, Vijay Seshadri at the Jaipur Literature Festival
this year. Right, Seshadri’s wife Suzanne Khuri, second
row second from right, in the audience at JLF.
CHANDRA MOHAN ALORIA

I’m getting more interested in Urdu poetry again. I studied it quite a while ago and I got a really good sense of the
classical Urdu tradition. I was very interested in it at that
time.
I’m sure it came when I was in New York, basically I had
to survive and take care of my family. I had a kid and I had
to work all the time. I was thinking, I’m going to go back
and work on my Urdu, but I never really had the time.
Now I feel I do have the time and it might be very interesting. Those translations have really been well received,
not only by Americans, but by also Urdu scholars, Fran
Pritchett for one. She taught me at Columbia. She said they
were the best translations into English she had seen. That
sort of got me interested in maybe doing a book of them,
which is still a project on the back burner.
The Jaipur Literary Festival. Was it the first time you
attended?
It was, and it was amazing! About 250,000 to 300,000
people come to it. They have panels and so on. It’s so
crowded! It’s a real mela. But, it’s very, very, well managed

and it was just fascinating to see young
India and the interest people take in everything.
The energy is just wonderful! I was dazzled by it.
Did you wear Indian clothes?
I wore Western clothes. It’s an English language festival. They had some vernacular stuff, but not that much. But
they cut across a broad range of interests. Some of the
political panels were fascinating. There would be rock star
kind of people who would show up like Shashi Tharoor and
V S Naipaul. To see Naipaul in his old age….
Compare the experience of attending and talking at literary festivals or at Oxford to that of being in the classroom.
This is a very different kind of excitement. Isn’t it?
Yes, it is. I think the one thing extends to the other. If you
learn how to speak to students, I think it’s very easy to scale
up to speak to large audiences and I was very grateful for
my experience as a lecturer in the classroom.
When I wound up as I did in Jaipur, facing an audience
of 1,000 people — it’s very unusual for a poet to be in an
auditorium where there are a thousand people sitting there
waiting to hear you. That’s kind of shocking.
I think I handled it okay simply because it’s not that different from talking to a classroom of 30 people in a lecture
hall. The experience for me was great! An incredible Indian
energy in Jaipur!
For me it was not that different from giving
talks and readings in America. What was different was what was on the other side — which
was India with all of its incredible talent and
energy and vitality. I was very happy to be
there!
What kind of audience will there be at Oxford
apart from the students there?
I think it will be academic students. I’m
going to give a lecture at Wadham College. I’ll
give a reading I don’t quite know where and
4M40
then I’ll conduct a workshop. I presume it will
be just the kind of audience one would

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M40

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M39

Vijay Seshadri, right, accepts
the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 from Lee C
Bollinger, president, Columbia University.
His father, pictured below, saw him win the
Pulitzer Prize before he passed away.
The poet said,‘It would have been very sad if I
had won the Pulitzer and he had been gone. I
would have been filled with regret.’

Vijay Seshadri
encounter if one went to an American university.
This is the first time I’ll be going to Oxford. It’s
the first time I’ll be going to England, in fact.
What are some of the books you wish you had
read by now and those you have not?
The books that I wish I had read and I haven’t
read? I haven’t finished all of Dickens yet. I
haven’t read The Mystery of Edwin Drood and
Barnaby Rudge. I’m saving those.
I would like to have read much more in the
Bhagavata Purana because I would like to
familiarize myself much more with Indian
myth.
There is such a vast body of Indian myth that I
haven’t read. There are a lot of French books
that I haven’t read that I keep saying I’m going
to get around to. They’re on one of the shelves
here.
French writers like Benjamin Constant. I’ve
never really read more than a smidgen of a
writer like Voltaire. I know a lot about him, but I
haven’t actually read much of him. I’m interested in finding out about him and a lot of pre19th century French poetry.
There are no books that I regretted
reading. When I was younger I would read a lot
of science fiction. A lot of those books are silly
and I probably shouldn’t have read them, but
they were a weird form of entertainment.
The thing about my reading habits is, I think, I
not only read the best work, I read everything. I
read the dictionary, for example, Webster’s
International. It’s on a stand in my living room. I
just go up to it and stand there and read words
and I find it fascinating! I just love it!
I am such an inveterate and habitual reader
and there’s probably nothing at all that I didn’t
get things out of, by reading it. Because it’s
almost a physical engagement with language. You know
this experience because you are a writer too.
Do you still have a fascination with the sea?
Sure! I do. There are so many trips I would like to take. I
would like to go to Antarctica, to explore the Arctic. I don’t
know if I ever will. I’m not driven… because my curiosity
was satisfied.
I spent five years in the fishing industry and went all over
the north Pacific on boats and stuff. My curiosity was pretty
much satisfied. There are places I would like to go. Of
course, I love the ocean and looking at it and being near it
and surrounded by water. It’s a great pleasure for me.
Did your ocean adventures make your parents nervous?
My parents were pretty confused. But they were very non
invasive people, very gentle. They didn’t really know what I
was doing. They were very enlightened in feeling that I
should be allowed to do what I wanted to do. They were
very unusual people; not just as Indians, but as human
beings.
They would be unusual in any circumstances. They created one child who was a poet and another one who became
a social worker who then moved to Spain and lives
there. They produced two very different children.
What was it like going to church on Sunday when you were
a boy?
This essay you can find on the Threepenny Review Web
site.
Our neighbors would take us to church and my parents

PULITZER.ORG and COURTESY: THE SESHADRIS

would let them take
me. We used to go to a
Protestant church; every
once and a while I would
go to a Catholic church
because our neighbors on
the other side were
Catholics, French
Canadian.
My parents were fine
with that. They were so
enlightened. They were
such modern people. They
were really so much a
product of a really enlightened segment of the
Indian Independence
movement.
My father was very left
wing and my mother was
too; they were anti-imperialists, and socialists and all those
things. Those high-minded people that India produced at
one time… and, hopefully is still producing.
These people wanted to take me to church and they said
the kid’s got to learn about this society. Let him go to
church. They did not have any hostility towards
Christianity or anything like that.
They had the deep, deep, Brahminical attitude that all
this is illusion, anyway.
Did you lose interest in going to church at a certain age?
I’ve been very deeply steeped in Christianity. I’ve had
many friends who were very Christian. My first girlfriend
dropped out of college to go to Bible college.
I’m sort of a Christian fellow traveler in a way that I
admire the doctrine and the myth tremendously. Suzanne
(his wife) is Christian, her father is a Lebanese Christian
and her mother is a Quaker from Philadelphia.
When Nicholas was growing up, we would take him to
church once in a while because we felt we had to introduce
him to some religious tradition so he would have that
option if he wanted it. We never made much of it.
We’re just very modern secular people like everybody of
our generation. I believe it is private, to ourselves. We do
not have any communal manifestation to extend to any
community. Although I don’t think faith necessarily has to.
What are you working on now?
I’m writing poems. I’m in the middle of writing a couple

of essays and a lecture. I’m writing the other
half… there’s a non-fiction narrative in the book
that won the Pulitzer Prize which is about my
experience on the Bering Sea.
I’m also writing about my mother. I wrote about
my father in The Long Meadow. Now I feel I have
to write about my mother and tell her story.
When I get those down, I’m going to put all of
these different prose pieces together and re-fashion them into a unified narrative and publish a
memoir. Basically I’m writing what I usually
write: Essays, poems and prose sporadically.
I’ve been sort of slowed down by all these family things
that have happened and the fact that I’ve been so busy running around the country giving readings. But now I feel I
can circumvent to get a lot of work done in the next year or
so. I have a sabbatical in the fall. This is the first time I’m
not going to teach.
You described your parents as enlightened people. What
have you taken most from them that has shaped you as a
teacher and as a poet?
What I’ve taken from my mother is technical. She is a
perfectionist and does everything in great detail. This really
taught me to take pains and take care with your own
work. Aesthetically, I’ve taken most from her.
In terms of character, what I’ve gotten is the tremendous
capacity for labor and courage from both of them.
My father especially. It was very courageous of him to
have come here when he did. Both of them came at a time
when there were no Indians here and had to fend for their
lives all by themselves.
They were very, very, dutiful, hard working and completely committed to their dharma. They definitely gave me a
sense of what it means to be disciplined and dutiful in the
world. I’m very grateful for that as an example. They provided a lot of order for my sister and myself. They had
struggles, their lives were difficult, much more difficult
than our lives were.
When they were in India, their lives were difficult. There
was a lot of tragedy in my mother’s family; and there was a
lot of poverty in my father’s because his father died when he
was very young. They had to overcome tremendous barriers. So I honor and revere them.
Now, that my father is gone and my mother’s so old and
sick. It’s just heartbreaking for me to think about them and
how much they gave me.
It is so great that my father got to see when I won the
Pulitzer Prize. It made him so happy. When I won, I called
him up immediately and said, ‘Daddy you and I did this.’ It
would have been very sad if I had won the Pulitzer and he
had been gone. I would have been filled with regret and it
wouldn’t nearly have been as sweet as it was, especially
because we had a hard life here.
We were strangers in this society. It wasn’t easy for either
my sister or myself growing up in that kind of racialized
set-up. I think my parents were very hurt about how difficult our lives were growing up in school where we were so
different from everyone.
I could see that they felt this kind of triumph. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M41

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘I knew in my heart of
hearts that he would get
the Pulitzer one day’

Vijay Seshadri and
Suzanne Khuri with
their son Nicholas.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY:
THE SESHADRIS

rom my perspective, Vijay and I come
from similar backgrounds. We both
had fathers who came here to pursue
science. My father is Lebanese; his is
from south India. They both came here
to get PhDs. Their focus was on science and the
language of science and not (I’m speaking for my
father) so much defining himself by nationality
but by his interests, sort of an international.
I was born in Philadelphia. My mother is
American. But I went to Lebanon when I was a
baby and I lived there off and on for a few years. I
came back permanently to this country around the
time that Vijay came to America, not the same
year but the same age.
When we met he was a graduate student at
Columbia (University). He was in the writing program and we met in New York City.
We had lots of common interests. We had a similar sense of humor, we liked to take walks in the
park, we had similar ways of observing people.
We didn’t raise our child in any religion. We celebrated Christmas, but his (Vijay’s) parents celebrate Christmas too. They don’t do it in the religious sense; a lot of people who live in this country
just get their kids presents at Christmas time.
They have a pine tree that they put up. Christmas
here is such a secular thing really.
I don’t really define myself as a Christian. My
mother is a Quaker. For them you have your communication with God; there’s no intercession of a
priest or anything.
And my grandfather in Lebanon was originally
Melchite Catholic but then he converted to
Presbyterianism, not because he really cared about
the creed but he wanted to go to a different school.
He didn’t like the Jesuit school he was going to.
He ran away from the school because every time
he asked a question he’d get slaps or something
worse. So, he found another school, a Protestant
school. He liked it better. Then he went to college
which was then called the Syrian Orthodox
College. He would walk to college everyday from
the mountains because he came from a family in

What kind of childhood did I
have? From the religious standpoint, we went to church on holidays, but it never was a big factor
guess growing up with
in my life. I guess the key thing my
many different identities,
parents stressed on was my educawith many different backtion and wanted to make sure I
grounds and cultures, it’s
was exposed heavily to literature
comforting to see someone
and the arts and music growing
like my father who came from
up...
India but moved to Canada when
Some of the key things
would be lessons that
there are a lot of challenges in life and no matter how down you get
and how much adversity
you encounter in life, you
cannot let it flatten you
and you cannot let it get
in the way. You should
have broader objectives.
The other thing would
be pure, unbridled self
confidence and assuredness in my ability to do
and achieve whatever I
want.
I’ll say that my relationship with my father
is a very good combination of child and brother.
I am the only child. So
there’s definitely natural
to have a brotherly relationship with my parents
growing up. As a matter
of fact, my dad is a
Vijay and Nicholas Seshadri at the
friend, but he’s also a parent
Pulitzer ceremony last year.
who teaches me lessons.
I knew in my heart of hearts that
he was 4, and then came to
he would get the Pulitzer Prize one
America at age 5, is very much an
day. I believe he’s one of the most
American citizen and is very much
talented poets of his generation.
integrated into American culture.
And, not because he is my father
It was very comforting for me
but because other great artists have
to see that despite a racial backsaid it for a long time. But, obviground in some ways that differously, at the end of the day, he’s my
entiated me from my peers and
blood, so I believe in him, no matother kids it is possible to inteter what.
grate and be a part of America in
I was actually away from home
the way my father was able to
when the news came. So, I went
when he was a kid.
out and had dinner and beers with
I guess growing up in New
some of my close friends at college.
York, a fairly liberal culture, this
But then, when I got back to New
wasn’t as big of an issue but
York, we did a celebratory dinner
growing up with a last name like
and watched the ceremony at
Seshadri is something that conColumbia. n
fused people. People have asked
from where it comes, what it
Nicholas Seshadri spoke to
means; how to pronounce it I
Arthur J Pais.
think is the biggest issue.
Nicholas Seshadri
Son

I
the Lebanese mountains. So, my grandfather was
not religious. He became a mathematician. He was
a little suspicious of religion, especially in
Lebanon.
My grandmother was Syrian Orthodox and she
was very religious. She used to light candles and
go in a huge procession on Palm Sunday where the
children go on the shoulders of their male relatives
all dressed up with huge candles.
(After the Pulitzer) our life has not been that different except that Vijay is traveling more. Nicky
(our son) and I took a week off to go with him to
the Jaipur Literature Festival. That’s generally
what I can do: Take a week off during the school
year to go away. There are certain events I go to. I
certainly went to the Pulitzer ceremony; I went for
a weekend to Florida because very few of his
events fall on a weekend... He went to the Miami
Book Fair or whatever they call it.
The big thing Nicky and I did was the Jaipur
Literature Festival. Vijay gave the keynote address.
It really was a lot of fun. I loved it. It is so pluralistic and everybody goes and it’s free and just the
range of things there from puppetry to
Scandinavian detective novels to books about beekeeping to politics, both internal to India and
international. I just found it really exciting. I liked
it a lot.
The variety of people. People who are very practical, people who are very intellectual, people who
were poets, people who were puppeteers and
didn’t speak a word of English, but were fantastic.
This one guy (I forgot his name) was obsessed
with tigers; I bought his book. I haven’t read it yet.
He has devoted his life protecting the tigers and
writing about tigers.
And my son would just go to these random
events and come back and say, “Oh I met these
Swedish detective writers. I didn’t even know
there were all these detective novels.” So he started
reading Swedish crime novels. n
Suzanne Khuri is a learning specialist who
combines her teaching skills with her acting skills
to work with kids who need to learn in different
ways.
She spoke to Arthur J Pais.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M42

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

His father’s portrait
Painted in Vijay Seshadri’s words

W

e were strange — doubly strange, because
Indians are strange
even in India, having
been exiled from time
and history by an overdeveloped, supersaturated civilization, and strange also
because no one remotely resembling us
had ever before lived where we lived. But
I was the only person in my family beset
and burdened by this strangeness. My
parents were absorbed in the details of
our material and spiritual survival — my
mother, gregarious and active, was busy
with her intense domestic arrangements;
my father was either working on his
spectra or bivouacked with the Army of
the Potomac. But I was transfixed by our
image reflected in the order that surrounded us. It was painful to look, but I
couldn’t tear myself away, and became
trapped by what I saw us as in the mirror
of our benign, distant, Protestant
Midwestern world. I was like
Shakespeare’s liquid prisoner pent in
walls of glass, and eventually had to ooze
my way free through the cracks formed
in that glass by the earthquakes of the
nineteen-sixties. This confused us as a
family, forced us to expend psychic
resources we had always carefully husbanded, and made us all unhappy, especially my father, who had wanted me to
climb up, climb up to his impossible level
of concretion and discipline. I didn’t
come back to the Civil War for a long
time. But then, slowly, peculiarly compelled, I did, watching the documentaries
on public television and browsing in the
history shelves of libraries and bookstores. I kept this resurrected interest
secret from my father for years. One
Thanksgiving in the mid-nineteenThe generations: Vijay Seshadri, center, with his parents and son.
nineties, though, when I thought I was
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE SESHADRIS
safe, I mentioned that I’d recently read
Shelby Foote’s account of Gettysburg, and was surprised at
changes that no one could have encompassed, not even
how clearly I could visualize the battle, and see it unfold
Lincoln. Look at how right he was about the Mexican war.
hour by hour. He didn’t say much at the time. His response
Look at how he wrote those memoirs while he was dying of
was delayed, and when it came it was calculated and mascancer, in order to provide for his wife. That alone was
sive. Three weeks later he sent me a Christmas present, a
enough to wipe away the blemishes of his Administration.
first edition of the two volumes of the Personal Memoirs of
Grant was always impressive. His only fault was that he
was too trusting. Grant, my father said, had requited himU S Grant. When I called to thank him, I told him that
self. Grant, my father insisted before we hung up, was an
Gertrude Stein had had a high appreciation of the memunderestimated man. n
oirs. He said that was good, and that he might read Stein
(he never did). And then, with both of us recognizing that
Vijay Seshadri’s father taught chemistry at Ohio State
the long interregnum had finally ended, that we were stuck
University. The author captured his relationship with his
with each other, we got into it about Grant. Grant was fine
father — through road trips to Civil War landmarks — in this
until he became President, I said, but what a terrible
poetic essay titled The Nature of the Chemical Bond, which
President. The corruption! The railroads! This agitated
was part of his book The Long Meadow.
him. It wasn’t Grant’s fault, he couldn’t be held responsible
Excerpted with the author’s kind permission.
for his corrupt companions. The Civil War had brought

Vijay Seshadri as a child in Bengaluru,
where he was born.

‘Mom, don’t
worry. I will
be No 1’
Champaka Lakshmi Seshadri
Mother

H

e always wanted to be a poet. We (her husband and her) were very worried about that.
It is difficult to be a poet and be No 1. Both of us
shared a passion for poetry, especially Wordsworth.
He would say, “Mom, don’t worry. I will be No 1”
(she laughs).
When he was young he traveled a lot. But there’s
nothing we could do. I used to worry until he came
home.
My husband encouraged him to read a lot. He was
always reading. When he was 7 years old, he read
all top poets.
From India, we went to Ottawa, Canada,
first. Two years later we came to America. Vijay was
6 when we came to America. My daughter was born
in Canada.
He is a very good friend to his sister. He is always
very kind to her and other people.
I taught him cooking. Now, he cooks for me. He
cooks some of the south Indian dishes. n
Champaka Lakshmi Seshadri, 85, home bound
in Pittsburgh, spoke to Arthur J Pais.

M43

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India Abroad June 19, 2015 M44

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘Anybody
can feel the
tenderness
in his
poetry’
Those who know him well
consider Vijay Seshadri not only
a brilliant writer, but also a kind
of philosopher and mentor.
COURTESY: THE SESHADRIS

Alice Quinn
Publisher and editor

W

e started publishing Vijay Seshadri in
The New Yorker pretty soon after I got
there, probably in ’90 or ‘91. I got there
yard (he grew up in Ohio) and as he goes into the house,
really, brilliant person.
in 1987. I remember reading poems of
his mother says, ‘Children, history is being made.’ The
And he’s a brilliant teacher. He is a mesmerizing lecturhis in an anthology called Thirty Under
poem reflects the perspective that he had painted on that
er.
Thirty. There was a poem called My Esmarelda and the
historical moment in the years since.
Did he tell you the story of the poem called The
opening lines are:
And we needed that perspective after 9/11. And so we
Disappearances? It was after 9/11. Everybody was still in
Some people like each other and are therefore like each
put the poem on the back page of The New Yorker. But he
emotional crisis.
other,
had to accept changing the title because it was a very intiViji (Vijay) had sent us a poem which we had accepted.
but I like you and therefore I’m
mate poem, a poem very intimate with crisis and it was
It’s in the Long Meadows. It was called Flying Saucer. I
so original a burden on my time
supremely valuable at that moment. But the title Flying
read that poem and I said, ‘Viji, we need that poem right
And I remember thinking Wow! This man’s mind is so
Saucer was too distant. And he had to really think about
now and we’re going to put it on the back page of The New
interesting. His head is always pivoting. He is a very, very,
that.
Yorker and we cannot put that title on.’
original thinker.
Flying Saucer answers his global, universal, Indian perThe poem is about his being a child. In 1963, when
It was such an arresting poem that I was moved to be in
spective and the disappearances were emphasized in the
Kennedy was assassinated, the children are playing in the
touch with him and to welcome work of his. All the three
loss of 9/11 and the loss of 1963. It was a great gift
editors (of The New Yorker) with whom I worked —
to us and to the American readership of The New
Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown and David Remnick —
Yorker that he allowed that change in the title.
loved his work.
I think he understood immediately the imporIt is rarer than we think that we encounter a contance of changing the title. And the poem became
temporary poet who knows the whole tradition of
a very important one.
poetry in English, who has thought about it and felt
At the luncheon at the American Academy of
about it. From Jonathan Swift and Wordsworth,
Arts and Letters, May 20, when we honored him,
from Herbert and Hopkins to Auden to Bishop to
Viji said he thought that D H Lawrence’s The
John Ashbery, Vijay understands it all. When you
Rainbow is the best novel in the English language.
read his poems, the streambed of that is providing
areas.
May 20, 2015, at the luncheon
That’s a comment to send you running back to your
fresh springs of perspective and conviction to every3 Sections is a book full of nimof the American Academy of Arts
library and that’s so typical of his authoritative and
thing he writes.
ble acrobatics in the verse line
and Letters, Vijay Seshadri was
amusing conversational style.
Did you read the middle section of his new book
and marvelously satisfying narrahonored with an award in literaHe has such a commanding intellect and anyabout salmon fishing? Do you remember how it
tive. It goes from short, cryptoture and the following citation:
body can feel the tenderness in the poetry. If you
ends? They are in jail and it’s a kind of life-or-death
surreal lyrics through a middle
read The Long Meadow, you’ll see sweetness
storm and he says, ‘Wait a second, I’m an Indian.
section about the salmon fishing
VIJAY SESHADRI
towards his dog. It is absolutely transcendent. n
What am I doing here?’ That is the classic Indian
culture of the Pacific Northwest,
Arts and Letters Award in
perspective on life.
to an end section of one long
Literature
Alice Quinn is Executive Director of the Poetry
But it’s a mystical perspective and he has that; at
poem about the nature/essence
Society of America and an adjunct professor at
the same time as a writer, he is a reckoner with a
of being.
Vijay Seshadri is a poet of deep
Columbia University's graduate School of the Arts.
kind of unappeasable truth and uncomfortable realiA profound accomplishment by
talent and high achievement. He
She was poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987
ties about human nature and about our state as we
a profound and accomplished
thinks big and he thinks small,
to 2007 and at Alfred A Knopf, from 1976 to 1986.
have determined it through neglect of our planet and
poet.
and writes beautifully in both
She spoke to Arthur J Pais.
through lack of historical attention. He is a really,

‘A profound and
accomplished poet’

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M45

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Clockwise from top,Vijay Seshadri’s
remarkable debut collection of 1996,
his James Laughlin Award-winning
second collection The Long Meadow
of 2004, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning
third collection in 2013.

We are meant to be dislocated. We
are meant to be baffled.
I am, by contrast to Vijay, an embarrassingly predictable personality, hopelessly Midwestern, and not known to
shock or surprise. Perhaps this is one
reason why Vijay and I work well
together. But I will always have this on
him: On April 14, 2014, the Pulitzer
Prizes were announced through the
media, and with most of us connected
more or less continuously to some
stream of news and communication
(see Vijay’s poem New Media), the
announcement of 3 Sections winning
the prize for poetry hit the Graywolf
office in a cluster of bursts, as if detonated on every screen.
After the immediate celebratory
moment, I called Vijay at home, assuming he already had the news. Our conversation went something like this:

Jeff Shotts
Publisher and editor

G

raywolf Press has been
Vijay Seshadri’s publisher from his remarkable debut collection,
Wild Kingdom, in
1996, through his James Laughlin
Award-winning second collection,
The Long Meadow, in 2004, and to
his Pulitzer Prize-winning third collection, 3 Sections, in 2013.
As his editor on the most recent
two of those three collections, I
have suggested to Vijay that he
doesn’t have to put nearly a decade
between each book, as I’m sure his
many readers would appreciate. But
to no avail.
We’ll have to wait in suspense — a
state of anticipation and uncertainty his poems seem to delight in,
crafted as they are toward a wry
and astute ambivalence about our
place in the world, at any given
moment.
3 Sections, for instance, is not
divided into three sections, at least
not obviously so. The confounding
of expectations is this poet’s deliberate challenge to his reader and to
himself as a writer.
In an interview conducted by Jeet
Thayil in Poets & Writers magazine,
Seshadri observes, ‘Nobody deals
with the deepest existential response, which is bafflement.’ That state of
unknowing, of mystery, of profound
uncertainty is rendered in Seshadri’s
poetry in masterful, meticulous, and
ambitious new ways.
In Personal Essay, perhaps the
greatest long poem of its kind since
John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a
Convex Mirror, Seshadri writes, ‘I’m
suddenly — what’s the word? —
bemused./I’m bemused because I think
I’m not what I think I am—/whatever I
think I am—’
Whatever else he is, or thinks he is,
Seshadri is a virtuosic poet. At one
moment, poems careen, sometimes for
pages, at the speed of thought. In another
moment, a brief poem is crafted in quatrains with unexpected rhyme.
In The Long Meadow and 3 Sections,
poems written in lines eventually give way
to long prose essays on the poet’s own
identity and history — whether in the

Decentering, baffling,
yet exhilarating
family car being dragged to yet another
Civil War battlefield, or on a fishing boat
getting tremendously seasick on the North
Pacific.
The array across a Seshadri collection is

exhilarating, with its own kind of suspense. The result is a decentering experience for the reader, one that catches us up
but that we can’t quite catch up to — the
swerve of consciousness itself.

can tell you that Vijay Seshadri,
despite the fact that he’s world
famous, works one-on-one with
undergraduate students. And you
have to understand, he will work
with first year students, with beginning students, he’s a person of enormous sensitivity and enormous humanity.
As grand as he is an author and by reputation, he gives of himself in an extraordinarily
generous way to his students.
I’ve known him for six years, since I became
dean of Sarah Lawrence college. All the professors at Sarah Lawrence work every couple of
years with first year students and they become
not just their teachers but their ‘dons.’ The
word ‘don’ at Sarah Lawrence does not mean
exactly the same thing as it means in England. A don is somebody who helps guide a student through their four years and helps them
understand the direction in which they’re
going in life, not only the academic and creative direction but what they want to accomplish in their life.
So, Vijay does this not only as a brilliant
writer, but also as a kind of philosopher and
mentor.
We have a very famous writing program. It
has created many famous, distinguished writers who have made a mark on the world
through novels, through poetry, through non-

fiction writing. Vijay is a very important part of
it. You know Vijay is not only a distinguished
poet but also the head of our non-fiction writing program. He was chosen at the college to
address the college at its first convocation. His
address, which talked about the impact of the
Sarah Lawrence experience on himself and on
his students was extraordinarily erudite and
moving at the same time.
I’m constantly surprised by his humanity. You
might meet him at a reading with a large number of very impressive people. A place where he
is the center of attention. And, yet he will listen
to everybody who addresses him and give them
his full attention and answer them with understanding. He is quite extraordinary!
He doesn’t recognize hierarchies rather than
those created by virtue. I can just say as dean I
feel so enormously privileged to have worked
with him.
He’s brought us glory, he’s brought us wisdom and he’s brought us his profound equanimity. He is wonderfully humorous, extraordinarily literary humor. He puts things in perspective.
He rises above petty concerns. He keeps us
focused on more transcendent values. Do you
know his poem that was published just after
9/11? It’s one of the great American
poems. And, it serves to redirect us in many
ways. n
Jerrilynn Dodds, Dean, Sarah Lawrence
College, New York, spoke to Arthur J Pais.

ome people are not aware of
the trans creations (translations) of the Urdu poems
Vijay has trans created into
English. Though the work is
very limited and he has shared four of
them, the work is significant.
Vijay’s trans creations are much better than most people. His trans creations are done by a good poet and
most people’s trans creations are trans
creations done by people who are not
good poets.
You know what I mean by trans creations as opposed to translations, don’t
you?
Certainly, Vijay would agree that he’s
not literally translating the verses, but
he’s trying to capture the essence of
them and reframe them in English. He
has talked about doing others, but I
think he’s just very busy with many
things, including his elderly parents
who haven’t been well.
He was a good student — it was 25
years ago; I have no particular recollection — but it was clear that he was
smart and sophisticated. I watched his
growth and publications over the years
in a general way. I’ve much more
enjoyed his personal company. I’m
friends with his wife Susanne and son
Nicholas also.
I enjoy his temperament and person-

ality. He’s got an original mind and he
enjoys picking up an idea and embroidering it creatively and taking it in
unexpected directions.
Not many people are aware that he
has this adventurous streak in him... in
fact, when he gets annoyed, he sometimes says he wants to go back and be
on a fishing boat again; that he really
liked that part of his life very much.
He has wonderful literary abilities; he
really does have a gift of words, and I’ve
always enjoyed seeing how he uses it.
The poem that he published in The New
Yorker, that came out right after
September 11, that one you want to take
note of... I remember at the time how
moved by it I was and how unexpectedly appropriate it was because it came
out right after September 11.
It hadn’t been written with regard to
the events of September 11 but it almost
felt as though it had. It almost seemed
to anticipate the 9/11 events. It almost
seemed to anticipate the feelings of flying and vanishing that were associated
with people leaping to their deaths
from the towers. It was a very moving
and melancholy but powerful poem. n
Frances Pritchett is Professor Emerita
of Modern Indic Languages, Department
of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and
African Studies, Columbia University. She
taught Vijay Seshadri several years ago
and is today his friend.
She spoke to Arthur J Pais.

“No, I wasn’t meant to
love and be loved.”
No, I wasn’t meant to
love and be loved.
If I’d lived longer, I would
have waited longer.

not dead but perpetually
dying.

Death would be fine, if I
only died once.

I want my friends to heal
me, succor me.
Instead, I get analysis.

I would have liked a solitary death, not this lavish
funeral, this grave anyone can visit.

Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and
hungry.
Knowing you faithful
would kill me with joy.

Conflagrations that
would make stones drip
blood
are campfires compared
to my anguish.

Delicate are you, and
your vows are delicate,
too, so easily do they
break.

Two-headed, inescapable
anguish!—
Love’s anguish or the
anguish of time.

You are a laconic marksman.You leave me

Another dark, severing,
incommunicable night.

You are mystical, Ghalib,
and, also, you speak
beautifully.
Are you a saint, or just
drunk as usual?
— Unpublished; provided
to Columbia by the translator, Vijay Seshadri in May
2009
Shared with India Abroad
by Frances Pritchett.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M47

ON THE
FRONTLINES
‘We spend worldwide a lot of money on militaries and training
exercises. But what’s going to be the greatest killer probably over
the next 50 years — barring a world war — is infectious disease
and we don’t pay attention to that as much.’
For the last five years, Dr Pranav Shetty has been among the first
doctors to go knee deep into war-zones, areas hit by natural
disasters and deadly epidemics, including Ebola. The winner of
the first India Abroad Doctor of the Year Award shares his
experience of striving to keep the world healthy with Aziz Haniffa.

Presented by

DR PRANAV
SHETTY

INDIA ABROAD
DOCTOR OF THE
YEAR AWARD
2014
For dedication during a
global crisis; for battling a
deadly disease; for selfless
service to humanity.

COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M48

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

ON THE
FRONTLINES

T

he Indian-American community — and the
world for that matter — came to know of Dr
Pranav Shetty’s selfless heroism only when he
popped up on the White House radar, when
we journalists received a release informing us
that he would be among a select few invited to sit in First
Lady Michelle Obama’s box during President Barack
Obama’s State of the Union address January 20.
He created history by becoming the first Indian
American to be accorded this special honor, specifically
for leading the International Medical Corps team on the
frontlines during the Ebola epidemic in Liberia.
And when the President got to the part of his remarks
where he recognized the selfless service of Ebola fighters
and their lifesaving efforts in West Africa, the cameras
panned toward Dr Shetty, 33, the Mangalore-born,
Trinidad-raised, Virginia-based physician, and the IMC’s
Global Emergency Health Coordinator, sitting in the First
Lady’s Box.
The IMC, a non-profit organization, that had been a critical partner in the international support efforts to fight the
Ebola epidemic, had deployed him to Liberia in August
2014 to establish and oversee two Ebola treatment units. In
addition, he managed teams of rapid responders that were
deployed to Ebola hot spots in Liberia and a training center
for local and international health-care workers. He had
remained on the frontlines for four months.
At the time, Dr Shetty had said in a statement: ‘The
United States government has been a strong supporter of
our work, and it was truly an honor to be recognized by the
President and First Lady on behalf of tens of thousands of
nurses, doctors, burial team workers, and others who are
tirelessly working to save lives in West Africa. IMC is one of
the few international organizations treating Ebola patients
in West Africa, but we are also focused on building local
health care capacity so medical professionals across the
region can become their own first responders — to not only
prevent and treat Ebola but also other illnesses.’
When India Abroad, immediately after he was accorded
this unprecedented recognition, asked him what he would
say to people who call guys like him ‘selfless heroes,’ Dr
Shetty simply said, “That’s very kind of them to say so. But
really, we are doing our function in the world. Any family
physician in India, who is seeing patients day in and day
out, they are also heroes and they are doing their best to
make sure that the world is healthier and a better place and
no different from us.”
He viewed the entire experience as “a little surreal,” especially as he saw himself there as only a representative of the
IMC and “the thousands of health workers and other people
really working on the frontlines against Ebola.”
“My position in IMC is Emergency Health Coordinator, so
I represent the organization in these types of projects and
for these types of events as well,” he had added. “It was
quite a privilege to do so. I owe a lot to our heritage and
upbringing in this regard. I am so proud to represent the
entire community — both humanitarian as well as the
Indian-American community.”
But then this humility, keeping a low profile and flying
under the radar shunning publicity, was quintessentially
Pranav Shetty — as his parents, his sisters, his close friend
Dr Aaron Skolnik, his colleagues and his boss at IMC would
later tell us.

Perhaps no recollection was more emotional than his
father’s. Dr Manohar Shetty spoke of how at barely age
nine, Pranav became the man of the house, when he moved
with his mother Sujatha Shetty to Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
in August 1990 so that she could pursue an associate degree
in nursing. The senior Dr Shetty had remained in Trinidad
and Tobago, continuing his work there as a plastic surgeon
and burns specialist till he was able to get a job in the US,
and move to Pittsburgh two years later.
Pranav Shetty’s twin sisters, Meghana and Shivana,
explained how he was their hero much before he became a
hot-shot physician rushing off to war zones, disaster areas
and epidemic-ridden regions of the world, further elucidating the soul of his character and why humanitarian work
perhaps was his calling.
As the initial health technical lead for IMC’s major emergency response operations worldwide, Dr Shetty is often
one of the first to deploy to the affected area in the aftermath of a disaster or crisis.
In that earlier interview with India Abroad, asked why he
picked the IMC and the risks that went with it over a cushy
job in the US (not difficult considering he had a medical
degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine, had completed his residency in emergency medicine at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, had completed a
fellowship in Global Health and International Emergency
Medicine at the University of Maryland, had received his
Masters of Public Health from the University of Maryland
and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from the
University of Pittsburgh) he had said, “I strongly believed in
its mission. I believed in what the International Medical
Corps did around the world as did other such humanitarian
agencies. I really believe for those of us who work in this
field — a lot of us who work for the International Medical
Corps as well as other organizations — we believe in a sense
of service behind it. It’s really a pleasure to be able to work

The IMC deployed Pranav Shetty to Liberia in August
2014 to establish and oversee two Ebola treatment
units. In addition, he managed teams of rapid
responders that deployed to Ebola hot spots in
Liberia and a training center for local and
international health-care workers
COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS

here and alongside the colleagues we see in the field, who
are making, as you mentioned, some of the sacrifices, to be
able to do the type of work that we do.”
“Every humanitarian emergency has risks,” he had added.
“Any time we respond to any type of emergency situation
those risks are inherent, and we need to manage those risks
in every deployment. But it’s a tradition here (to work in
these danger zones) that that’s what we are called to do. For
myself, personally, and for the International Medical Corps,
there wasn’t any question because we saw the need that was
there on the ground and we had a capacity to respond and
that’s what we did.”
Before Liberia, in his nearly five years with the non-profit
organization, Dr Shetty had already been knee deep in the
war-zones of Libya and Iraq, tending to Syrian refugees in
Jordan, taking care of the displaced in Sudan,
or treating patients in the Philippines in the
aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan. And soon after
returning from Liberia, he was off to West
Africa again to establish IMC’s first Ebola treatment center in Guinea.
And when India Abroad spoke to him in May,
Dr Shetty was in Nepal where he had rushed
following the devastating earthquake April 25
and where he was scheduled to remain until
June tending to the injured and the sick in
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remote villages and helping to put together the
infrastructure to prevent an outbreak of infec-

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M49

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Dr Pranav Shetty
tious diseases, particularly in a country
where cholera is endemic.
Dr Shetty takes the conversation forward
from that first conversation in January.
The last time we spoke was in January,
just after you created history by becoming
the first Indian American to sit in the First
Lady’s box during a President’s State of the
Union. You were being honored for being
part of the selfless fighters against the Ebola
virus in Liberia. Almost immediately after
this recognition, you were heading out to
Guinea to establish the International
Medical Corps’ first Ebola treatment center
there. What’s the latest status of the Ebola
epidemic now in West Africa?
In Liberia, they’ve declared Ebola free.
That’s where I actually spent most of my
time. So, that’s very reassuring. But the
issue is that in West Africa, the borders are
very porous, so, you can’t actually take stock
that it’s really Ebola free until it is wiped
from the region. So, it’s one of those
instances of cautious optimism in terms of
how things will go.
The numbers have certainly gone down,
but at the end of the day, this type of epidemic, especially, is one of scale, both in
terms of numbers and in terms of geographic spread, as well as the difficulties
that have been experienced really in terms

of finding all the cases. We know that this
will continue for some time.
In Sierra Leone, it has come down and in
Guinea it’s kind of smoldering along. So,
we’ll get to zero at some point, but we’ve
got to keep up the attention and keep up
the level of resources being put to work
because the issue is that it started with one
case, and until you find that last case,
there’s always the risk of a resurgence.
On top of it, it’s the fact that it’s not an
imported Ebola from Central Africa, DROC
(the Democratic Republic of Congo),
Uganda, Sudan, or some of these regions.
It’s in the animal population. So, we know
that it’s not a matter of if it will recur, but
when and whether we will be prepared to
deal with it the next time — it could be one
year, it could be 10 years. These things are
very difficult to predict.
When we also spoke last, the media had
gotten around to giving the Ebola virus the
attention it probably deserved but the epidemic was already well on its way in terms
of a crisis. There was paranoia and fear psychosis in the US, especially following the
death of some US residents and doctors who
had returned after being in contact with
Ebola patients in West Africa.
The Fox News of the world and some US
lawmakers were screaming that flights and
personnel from Liberia and other parts of
West Africa be banned from entering or reentering the US.
The Obama administration then dispatched troops to build up the infrastruc-

ture and training facilities, etc, but was it a
little too late because by the time these
sophisticated centers were set up the virus
the outbreak had largely faded and these
clinics were empty. Are you glad that at least
the infrastructure is set up now to deal with
the virus if it breaks out again in Liberia?
The lessons learned going forward is one
that epidemics need to be respected — it’s
the first time Ebola got on a plane and that
really opened the world’s eyes to really, the
global nature of diseases and that’s why it’s
not a localized problem.
In 1976, Ebola was some kind of a Central
African issue at that time. But now, it’s a
world issue and the world’s problem. So, we
need to be prepared as kind of a global
community to deal with it.
As you mentioned, even though it has
been thought that the humanitarian
response was slow to start out, the fact of
the matter is that it did start up and it went
up and it went up as quickly as it could.
When you are talking about the entire
scope of humanitarian intervention, it’s the
kind of machine that needs to be started up
and revved up and it sort of takes some
time to get to where it’s really, really effective. It got there. You really can’t argue with
the result.
It’s not just the treatment centers. It was
the social mobilization; it was the buy-in
from the communities; it was the state of
burials; it was the fact that people were
engaged and involved and preventive in
their action and that was brought under

control in Liberia.
So, we hope those lessons will not be lost
and that the infrastructure and all the
training — thousands of health-workers
trained by the various organizations in
West Africa — ensures that we will be better prepared for the next one. But, we need
to make sure that all the systems and all the
training doesn’t go to waste through inaction and kind of inattention over the next
several years. (The IMC currently operates
four Ebola treatment centers in West Africa
— two in Liberia and two in Sierra Leone
— providing not only isolation and health
care but also psychosocial support, which is
a critical element in recovery. To expand the
pool of health workers capable of managing
and working in Ebola treatment centers
across the region, IMC, led by the likes of Dr
Shetty, provides hands-on, in-depth training to locals as well as organizations.)
So, what you are saying is that in a sense,
even though it has been contained, it has not
been totally eliminated?
That’s the idea. When you have a disease,
which has an animal reservoir in that, it
lives in the animal population and doesn’t
make animals sick.
Although it has never been strictly proven
that the natural animal reservoir are bats
and it doesn’t make bats sick, but whenever
there is an interaction between a bat and a
human it can spill over to the human population — if this is the theory, and we are not
helping to eliminate all the (infected) bats,
it’s something that is always going to be a
persistent risk...
So because of this idea that it’s in the animal population and can constantly at any
time spill over, that is a reality that we have
to deal with and prepare for.
During your stints in Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Guinea and other West African
countries, what were some of the high
points vis-à-vis your humanitarian efforts.
Also, what were the absolute lows, considering the sheer size and scale of this battle?
It’s really difficult to think of it in terms
of the population, like, oh, there are a lot
of cases and that’s a low point and the
cases have gone down and that is a definite high point.
It’s a different emotional reaction after
that. The IMC treated a number of patients
at the Ebola treatment centers and, of
course, when you have people brushing
their teeth in the morning and dead in the
afternoon, it’s a real low. But
we accept. Not necessarily

Top row second from left,
Dr Pranav Shetty in First Lady
Michelle Obama’s box, front
row second from right, prior
to President Barack Obama’s
State of the Union speech
January 20.
ROB CARR/GETTY IMAGES

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M49
Dr Pranav Shetty
accept, but we understand that we are not able to save
everybody — that is a stark reality and there’s really nothing
that’s going to change for them.
But we’ve learnt a lot and we’ve got better just like everybody else in terms of patient care. But when people are dying, you have a sense of being almost powerless sometimes
over what you can do, and that’s a low. But you try to reassure yourself that we tried our best and it was what it was.
Then there’s the point when you start questioning yourself as to what it is you are doing there — what’s your purpose. Of course, when people survive and things like that —
that’s great.
But I believe the really high point for me is that you
understand that this is a public health concern. It’s definitely a personal issue for every patient, and you realize that
every person that we treated — even if they died — because
we were able to isolate them and treat them, we may have
prevented two, four, six more cases within the family, within the household, or within the community.
That’s something to take solace in even when patients die,
which they will. I mean, nobody goes treating Ebola thinking that no patients will die, but the fact that when you
question yourself as to what was the purpose, you realize
that because you isolated this father now, the child will survive or the wife will survive, for example.
For me, it’s different ways of approaching patient care
and medicine and that’s to realize that this is a disease that
has a huge impact on people’s loved ones, and by your
action or the action of your organization, the NGO community, the global community, the local Liberian health workers, we really prevented multiple other infections and multiple other deaths.
For me, that’s the impact that we have. That we’ve really
been able to prevent those kinds of potentialities by providing treatment to one person, whether or not you are able to
save that one person, is something to take away.
Your loved ones obviously worry every time you go off to
these war zones or disaster areas or Ebola virus-like epidemic areas. How do you reconcile their fears, not just where you
are concerned, but that all these loved ones are constantly
tense whenever you go out on one of these assignments?
A couple of things. One, is, I have a very understanding
and trusting family. My parents have been very supportive,
and not necessarily now but throughout anything I’ve done.
They’ve certainly made a number of sacrifices in their lives
to allow for myself and my sisters to have the opportunities
that we have to choose our own paths. So, that’s from my
side, one of the greatest gifts that they could have and have
given us.
Nora (his wife), obviously, I mean, is the most patient
person on the planet. Most others would not be as understanding as she’s been in everything we’ve done… Nora’s
moved to many different places because of things that I’ve
done or we’ve done together, and I think she’s the only person you’ll find that would be so understanding and accepting of such a lifestyle. I moved her to Jordan for over a year
and… she’s so flexible and loving and understanding, which
is why she did what she did.
Secondly, for me, this is not that I volunteer — this is
actually what I do. This is my career, so I am aware of the
risks. I am careful about what I do. I don’t try to put myself
in harm’s way.
Certainly, there’s a dangerous context obviously in everything we do, but then, so is downtown Baltimore. So, you
have your wits about you and use common sense.
This is my career and I have built it around understand-

ing, both from the programmatic side, what we can do,
with the resources we have and also to do it safely and
effectively with impartiality and neutrality and things like
this, because any risk I pose to myself is a great detriment
both for me, and of course, to my family, to everybody, and
that’s why we are measured and calculated definitely in
where we go and what we do and things like this. We have
to be cognizant of that.
We do that through our organization and do that in a way
that creates the environment for us to be safe and work
effectively. So, I guess I look at it a little bit differently. I am
fairly comfortable, but that’s just from experience and also
from the mindset of how we operate here and wherever
that is.
Nepal is obviously not a dangerous context, but Libya,
Iraq and places like that can be, and we are definitely aware
of the environment and aware of what results our actions
may have.
Nora, she knows that and it’s not that I am running off
with no support structure and things like that, and I believe
that also provides some sort of reassurance. I hope it does.
It’s interesting since you brought up Nepal as compared to
other dangerous zones and areas that you’ve gone to because
Nora brought up the point that when you were in Liberia,
even though there were all these fears and paranoia about
the Ebola virus, you were in control of what you were doing,
in terms of safety protocols and what you had to do and wear
etc, and not take undue risks. But in Nepal, in the aftermath
of the earthquake with all of the after-shocks, she argued
that you maybe in a building and if there were to be an aftershock, you would have no control at all?
Yes, definitely. But in the work we do, any building we
reside in, we have an engineer look at it before we live in it
— that can be a hotel, it could be a house, it doesn’t matter.
When there was this second earthquake in Nepal May 12,
and after that, we actually slept in the fields for a couple of
days before we evaluated as to what’s the right step to take.

Pranav Shetty treats a young man injured as Super
Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) made landfall in Guiuan,
the Philippines, in 2013.
COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS

But, you are right, there is certainly a degree of risk we
have no control over but we have to mitigate that to the
greatest extent possible and be prepared to act quickly for
ourselves and our colleagues to be safe.
We take the steps necessary to be able to protect ourselves
and show responsibility both to ourselves and to our families and to the organization. But you’ll never get rid of risk
— that’s impossible to do that wherever you are — but you
do the best you can per your experience and your ability to
mitigate that to the greatest extent possible in what we do.
In the past few weeks that you’ve been in Nepal, has the situation stabilized somewhat?
Yes, the situation has stabilized. It’s really an infrastructure issue now as the reconstruction and rehabilitation is
largely the focus now. So, we are really looking for support
in the rebuilding at this stage. The International Medical
Corps is focusing on these remote areas, which are often
times the hardest to reach and some of the ones that are
the most neglected.
How about the thousands who were injured?
Have they been taken care of now?
In an earthquake, usually the immediate
effect are obviously deaths and injuries but at
this time, in terms of injuries, that’s been taken
care of.
The things we worry about now is that the
monsoon season is coming soon at a time
when naturally infectious diseases come up. In
situations, where there is a lot of crowding and
population displacement and lack of a good
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health system and a public health system,
especially in terms of nutrition, food security,

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3M50

Pranav Shetty leads a mobile medical
unit in the Gorkha District in Nepal, the
epicenter of the first earthquake in April.

Dr Pranav Shetty
and water and sanitation, we worry about
outbreaks of different infectious diseases.
There’s a lot of focus being put on that as
well in terms of surveillance, and putting
into place procedures to respond to that if
that is the case. We always need to be prepared.
Some of the things that I am most concerned about in these settings is the spread
of diseases like measles — that is very contagious — and diseases like cholera, because
it would be in the water supply and spreads
very quickly. Cholera is endemic in Nepal
and you have epidemics every several years.
So, this situation, which is in a setting that
doesn’t allow for proper hygiene, needs a lot
of attention.
The appropriate measures are in place to
deal with it when and if it occurs.
Everybody is working as hard as they can to
get the public health measures — sanitation, the water supply, nutrition and all of
these things — in place so that we can avoid
it.
Prevention is definitely the easiest and the
most cost-effective manner of dealing with
disease but we need to be preparing to
respond with the treatment.
It has been quite amazing that we’ve gone
so far without anything major occurring
and we have to keep up the focus and the
attention and make sure that adequate
resources are allotted to continuing that
kind of preventive measures to ensure nothing like that occurs in the near future.
In terms of the rebuilding of homes in
these remote villages — many of which I
believe collapsed — what’s the situation?
They are generally rather strong houses
but — held together by mud and water and
a mixture of cement — they were completely razed to the ground in these villages. In
terms of rebuilding them, the issue is that
it’s very difficult to get supplies into these
areas, and we fly in by helicopter; otherwise
it’s a two-day walk to these villages. There
are no actual roads that are traversable by a
vehicle to get there.
The reconstruction is very difficult because the access is
very limited. People who want to reconstruct have to physically carry stuff and this access challenge is one of the hardest things to get around, particularly for things like shelter,
which requires a lot of commodities as you know and are
heavy to bring in. So, help in this area should be a priority
by the international community.
How conspicuous is the presence of Indian doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers and personnel?
India immediately sent out teams here, and we have definitely heard from the Nepali population that the Indian
Army has been doing a lot of logistics work and a lot of
health work.
Also, in hospitals, there are contingents of Indian volunteers, who are assisting, especially in the specialized functions because even though the staff were there, the need
exceeded the current capacity in terms of not only a skills
set, but also the clinical capacity to deal with the patients.

COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS

Also, the addition of a lot of Indian physicians, nurses,
specially in the specialized fields like orthopedic surgery,
trauma surgery, has helped a lot and you heard that time
and time again, about the impact that the clinicians had as
well as the huge logistical support given by the Indian military.
Every time you go to the airport, you see the Indian
Army’s helicopters there, flying and transporting people to
these remote locations. That support is very visible and
much appreciated.
Finally, what’s your prognosis for the future of the
Ebola virus and what are the strategies that have to be
institutionalized, particularly by the US and the international community?
One, Ebola is not necessarily a disease to be feared, but it
is a disease to be respected. And it’s a hard lesson that we
learnt. This was the first time that we’ve seen it in this context by the fact that it got on a plane and ended up in Texas.

So, it was really an eye-opener for the US
public health system, for the world, and it
took so many resources to get behind it.
That, to me, that’s the greatest lesson:
Look what happened when we were a little
bit late and then we waited and we didn’t
pay attention.
It’s not necessarily for Ebola, but we are in
an age when — because of globalization and
because of climate change and in interactions between humans and animals and the
crowding of animals in certain countries
because of x, y, z economic reasons — we
can’t necessarily predict what’s going to
happen with infectious diseases.
We see Avian flu, and swine flu, H1N1,
SARS, Ebola, things like this and it seems
(to spread) more rapidly now than in the
past. We are learning about these viruses...
But we see that we as a world are fairly
unprepared to deal with something like this,
especially on a grand scale. Could we have
imagined some virus which has the fatality
of Ebola, upwards of 50 percent... can
spread in this way?
We have to understand that if we are slow
with a virus like Ebola, where I could stand
with no protection one meter away from a
patient — and I have many times and have
had a conversation across a one-meter barrier with nothing in between — what would
you imagine if there was a virus that was
much more contagious?
Ebola is infectious, but it is not contagious; it’s not that easily transmitted. So, it’s
not easy to catch the disease if you take the
proper precautions and are not exposed.
So, what should be known in the US or
any sort of global public health body, is how
do we take the lessons learnt here with
Ebola, which garnered the world’s attention
and really put that to the world’s preparedness to what’s going to be the next virus,
and there’s going to be one — there is no
doubt about that.
It’s just what and when and if we don’t prepare ourselves
to respond early or be able to be able to respond internally
in the US, for example, because it will get on a plane and it
will go to different places, then all these lessons are for
nothing.
The potential is there for a virus that’s much more
deadly than Ebola. I mean Ebola, relatively speaking,
there were not even 12,000 deaths — it’s not on a scale
that actually could have been. For me, that’s what we
should walk away with.
How do we actually not forget about this and translate
this to something that we really act on?
We spend worldwide a lot of money on militaries and
training exercises and getting prepared for that. But really
what’s going to be the greatest killer probably over the
next 50 years — barring a world war — is infectious disease and we don’t pay attention to that as much, and
maybe, we really should. n

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He’s a
realized soul’

Pranav was very inspired by his
grandfather, who was also a physician.

Sujatha Shetty
Mother

F

rom a very young age, he’s been very
intuitive to others’ needs, and the only
reason I am saying it is because my
cousins always used to make note of
it. Like, if they were playing and if one of the
kids fell, he (a cousin) would say how before
his wife could run to help her daughter,
Pranav was already there soothing her.
I believe it was my father, also a physician,
who was influential in shaping Pranav’s personality in terms of going beyond the call of
duty to help others and be caring. My father
was a very giving sort of doctor and man.
Pranav Shetty with his parents Sujatha and Manohar.
My mom died when I was about two years
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: MANOHAR SHETTY
old and my father had to raise the three of us,
two siblings and I, under the age of six, and he
never remarried. He raised us, and I believe it made an influence on
Pranav because he has seen and heard from me about my father and his
patience and I believe it really affected him and had a deep influence on
him. I believe it made a difference to Pranav, although I didn’t see it till
later.
To tell you the truth, as a parent, it’s hard to see your child go to these
places (war or epidemic zones or areas struck by natural calamities) — it
worries us because you know, we brought him here (to the US) to have a
better life.
One thing Pranav said to me when I questioned him made me never
ever question his decision to go to these places. Once, I think, he was in
medical school then, and had gone to volunteer in Guatemala. There was
no contact with him. I think, he was working in a Mayan village and
going in a boat and they had no phone access and I was really, really concerned at that time.
Manohar Shetty
So, I said, ‘Pranav, this is very dangerous because I think there are
Father
rebels and things like that and what if something happens?’ He said to
me, ‘Mom, if anything is to happen to me, it will happen to me, wherever
f course, we are immensely proud over
I am. I could be walking down the street in Los Angeles (he was a student
the humanitarian work Pranav is doing
then at UCLA) and I could get shot over there as I am here.’ So, that was
all over the world, particularly in counthe last time I ever told him.
tries where the need is so great, but at
Now we just pray and say, keep him safe and whatever will be, will be. I
the same time, we have all of the concerns and fears
guess, in a way it goes back to karma, which we people from South Asia
of parents, when he goes off to some of these very
believe in so much. Here he was reinforcing this concept of karma, that
dangerous areas.
you will go when it’s your destined time to go.
Initially, we were very, very tense, and every time
Of course, we always worry about him, but we just pray. We don’t say,
we would be looking at BBC news, world news,
‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’ because as my brother calls him, ‘He’s a realabout what’s happening in the countries and areas
ized soul.’
he was in. But now, we have sort of got used to it
My brother said, ‘Don’t try to stop him because you cannot. It’s someand resigned to it.
thing he feels he’s got to do.’ n
We talked to him and he said there is a danger
everywhere. He didn’t want us to think about it and
Sujatha Shetty graduated from the University of Madras with a bacheworry. Now — actually, I don’t know how my wife
lor’s degree in English Literature. When Pranav was nine months old, she
feels about it — but I, kind of, don’t think too much
accompanied her husband, a physician, to Trinidad and Tobago, where he
about it.
got a job as a plastic surgeon.
Only thing is, whenever he gets a chance, when
Then, when Pranav was 9, she moved with him to Fort Lauderdale,
he gets a connection — WiFi or something — he’ll
Florida, while her husband remained in Trinidad, and went to school and
write e-mails or call us. But most times, communigot herself an associate degree in nursing.
cations is bad, but then, somehow, somewhere, he
She now works part-time as a nurse in a private hospital in Pittsburgh,
gets into some WiFi area and he communicates
Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and one of their twin
quickly, saying he’s safe — it’s always a short comdaughters, Shivana. The other daughter Meghana is majoring in medical
munication.
technology at Clarion University in Pennsylvania.
The other day, he made it a point to call his mothShe spoke to Aziz Haniffa.
er for Mother’s Day.

‘What we
take for granted,
is now a luxury
for him’

O

A lot of people are surprised because he’s an ER
physician and say he could have made money and
been very comfortable, but he tried it for six
months or so and he said, it’s not his cup of tea. He
is now living in tents and sleeping wherever he can.
He was in South Sudan two years ago, and there
are no structures there, nothing, and his wife one
day called him and said, somebody from
International Medical Corps is going to see you
there in South Sudan and what do you want from
here and he said, ‘Send a pillow. Here we don’t have
pillows, so send a pillow.’
After he came back during his tour there to the
United States, he said, the first luxury was going
and sitting in the airport — in the air-conditioned
lounge for half-an-hour. He said that was the best
feeling. So, what we take for granted, is now a luxury for him.
We thought that after a year or so, he would get
into a structured life of most physicians in the US.
We thought maybe, one year, two years, but now
he’s already going on in five years, although at the
back of our minds, we are so very, very proud of
what he is doing and have deep respect for him.
But, like I said before, we as parents, we worry.
I must tell you when I was in Trinidad and my
wife and Pranav were in Florida, and he was just
eight, Pranav had to become the man of the house
suddenly. At eight years, he had to go to the grocery
store — my wife was studying (to get
an associate degree in nursing). He
would wake up to the alarm by himself, get his bicycle, go to school, come
back and makes his own microwave
dinner and when the children (twin
sisters, Meghana and Shivana, who are
12 years younger than him) were born,
he used to also take care of him. We
used to have a part-time baby sitter,
but he used to come, change their dia4M54
pers, feed them. He practically raised
them. My wife would come back and

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M53

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘For him, it’s a lot about not
being complacent in life’

es up to the situation, he’s able to
provide me with more information
with what’s going on. So, I feel kind
of relaxed a little bit.
met Pranav 11 years ago. We
But with Ebola, this was one of
were introduced by mutual
the first emergencies where his
friends when I was a sophosafety was relatively within his own
more during my undergraducontrol, because he’s often going
ate days at the University of
into war zones. For example, in
Pittsburgh and Pranav was in his
Nepal right now, there are a lot of
first year of medical school.
after-shocks, so if he’s in a building
We started dating a couple of
and it collapses, all these things are
months after we met and I found
outside his control. But with Ebola,
Pranav to be very ambitious, very
he was the person tasked with
dedicated. He has great family valtraining all the doctors and nurses
ues, and that aligns very strongly
to stay safe and to wear the equipwith the same values that I grew
ment properly and that type of
up with. We dated for quite some
thing. So, it’s in his best interest
time and ended up getting married
and in the best interests of others
in 2010.
to be trained in all of this.
I moved with Pranav wherever
He was the key person to uphold
he moved from his residency to his
all these standards. So, I began to
fellowship, so I’ve had a varied
feel a lot better after a couple of
background — I’ve worked in
weeks he opened the first United
museums, education and museum
Nations agency — that if he put all
research and then recently when
the safety protocols in place, the
Pranav was stationed in Jordan for
likelihood of you actually catching
a while, with Syrian refugees. I
Ebola was quite low.
decided to go and join him and
I think he grew up knowing that
that’s when I transitioned into the
as a lot of immigrants to America,
humanitarian response, working
his parents made a lot of sacrifices
with International Medical Corps
for him to be able to succeed. So
monitoring their projects. But that
the sacrifices he makes daily —
was just a short-term response.
where sometimes he may not have
Now that we are expecting our
running water, or has to sleep in a
first child — on July 4 — so I’ve
tent, these types of things that most
returned to domestic work and
people may not want to do — I
currently work for a charter school
Pranav and Nora Shetty in Jordan. She moved wherever he moved from his residency to his
think he just takes them in his
system in Washington, DC,
stride and that it is normal to be
researching and managing data.
fellowship, to places like Jordan when he was stationed to work with Syrian refugees.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: NORA SHETTY
giving up these things to be able
It has been difficult (Pranav’s
to improve the lives of yourself
long forays into these often dangerand the people around you.
ous areas for humanitarian service). It has not always
He also strongly believes you should be challenging
been his goal. His goal, when I met him, was to find a
yourself. I feel that when he was practicing medicine
specialty he enjoys in medicine and probably be havhere, he didn’t feel that as much…working in emering either a private practice or doing shift work. Then
gency rooms, he certainly was helping a lot of people,
he chose emergency medicine and he was working in
but he didn’t feel that he was constantly learning and
emergency rooms for a couple of years.
the ability to go abroad and makes all these contacts,
He seemed to have a strong interest and it seems
you have to learn all the different cultural things, you
like he’s well suited to a career in humanitarian
have to learn a lot of other medical systems in each
response. I think not everyone has the ability to
country and the governments and all that stuff — a
remain calm in those types of situations to make the
very large learning curve in his career that he has choquick decisions that are needed. Pranav’s strength is
sen. So, for him, it’s a lot about not being complacent
that he doesn’t become emotionally affected… and is
in life, always pushing yourself and trying to do better.
able to have a clear head and do what needs to be
So, it’s not necessarily coming from a place of —
done.
solely a place of — I want to do the most good, (but
I certainly wish he would be in safe locations. I also
that) I want to help people and that’s the end result.
feel that he along with his colleagues have the ability
So, it’s wonderful.
to really, truly, provide life-saving services to thouI knew the moment the Nepal earthquake happened,
sands of people, so I am very supportive of going. I
The Shettys lives in Virginia, though Pranav still
that
he
was going to rush off and as soon as the airport
have trusted him and the organization he works for to try as
considers Pittsburgh home. He did his high school
opened, he was going to get in. So, it’s part of our life now.
much as possible to protect his security.
there before attending the University of Pittsburgh,
It’s unfortunate when he misses family events or other
Unlike natural disasters (Pranav was in Nepal in the
where he met Nora. They are expecting their first
plans we have made, but that’s part of our lifestyle today. n
aftermath of the massive earthquake when his interview
child and this photograph was shot at her Bayake, the
was conducted) when he’s usually going 24, 48 hours foltraditional baby shower.
Nora Shetty nee Webber is majoring in art history and
lowing the disaster and when the media is also going, durpsychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She also has a
ing the Ebola crisis he was in Liberia at a time when the
master’s in education degree from George Washington
international community was really waking up to this situaEbola and passed away. Also, nurses and a lot of people.
University, in Washington, DC.
tion. There was a clear idea about what was going on
There certainly was an element of fear to that, but I think,
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.
beyond the fact that a lot of African doctors had caught
usually when he gets to a place and the media sort of catch-

Nora Shetty
Wife

I

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M54

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘My brother
is my hero’
Shivana Shetty
Sister

M

y brother has always encouraged
me.
He is my hero. One, because he is
helpful to people — he helped with
Ebola in Africa, is helping the injured
people in Nepal, he has helped people
who were hurt in wars and hurricanes.
And secondly, because he is helpful to
animals. He rescued our dog Fifi and
his dog Dosa from animal shelters, so
they can have a better life.
He deserves this award because he is
good — to both people and animals.
Shivana Shetty hopes to be a vet
helper.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

3M52
Manohar Shetty
do other things and study, so, he had to
step up to the plate and become and
adult quickly.
I must tell you also that when my wife
and Pranav were in Florida and staying
in an apartment complex, he had strongly defended another boy called Anan —
a Hyderabadi boy — living in the same
complex who was being bullied. He
would always stand up for Anan.
There was another boy, who had suffered a deformity after a vaccination,
who was being shunned, and later I
would come to know from that boy’s
mother that Pranav was always looking
out for him too and would also help him
with his homework.
It (Pranav taking on responsibility)
became so spontaneous that I even forgot that he was a small boy. We were
treating him like an adult and talking to
him like an adult, and now, I realize that
I missed the interaction with him as a
child during that period.
Dr Manohar Shetty is a psychiatrist in
Pittsburgh, where he immigrated to after
practicing plastic and burns surgery in
Trinidad and Tobago for over a decade
after leaving India, where he was trained
in surgery.
Born and raised in Mangalore, he did
his medical degree at the Stanley Medical
College in Madras and post graduate
work in surgery at the Kasturba Medical
College.
He spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

y earliest recollections are of
Pranav bringing Shivu and me
home from the baby-sitter’s everyday after school and taking care of us until
mom and dad came home. Only as a teenager — of the same age — did I realize how
much responsibility he showed because I am
sure he would have loved to hang out with
his friends instead.
From what mom has told us, he had taken
care of us from the time we were just a few
weeks old, when she had to attend
classes/events at her college and dad was
still working abroad.
Also, when my brother was younger,
many of our relatives and friends called

him a role model because he had won
many awards for his scholastic successes,
both in school and college.
As he grew older, people began to commend him for his humanitarian work that
has taken him around the world to places of
great suffering — both natural and manmade. In the many places he has worked, he
has managed with the most meager of basic
necessities, especially in South Sudan.
When mom, who was worried about his
well-being, asked him to pick a ‘safer’ place
to work, he said that although he had the
choice to leave, the people who lived there
did not have this choice and would continue
to live in those very conditions as would generations after them.
So, he said, for him to endure those conditions for whatever limited time he was there,

was ‘no big deal.’
Reading about his work with refugees of
wars, Ebola patients, and hurricane and
earthquake victims makes me proud to say
he is my brother. As an adult, I now realize
what a special human being my brother is —
a caring and dedicated physician whose
work embodies the oath taken by all physicians on their graduation from medical
school that ‘I solemnly pledge to consecrate
my life to the service of humanity.’
I love my brother with all my heart and
pray he will always stay safe to continue his
work with the less fortunate in the world.
Meghana Shetty is one of Dr Pranav
Shetty’s sisters, is a student at Clarion
University, Pennsylvania.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M55

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Rabih Torbay
Colleague

I

‘Pranav will go
anywhere to help out’

was the first person to meet him about four years
ago when he presented himself for an interview.
What struck me about Pranav was his passion and
dedication to humanitarian relief work. Here was
this doctor with a master’s in public health working at a hospital in emergency medicine, who came to me and wanted to
volunteer and intern with us at headquarters here, free of charge.
You don’t see that in many people and
that showed me his sense of dedication
that you hardly see in many other people these days. It also showed me the
level of passion and flexibility that he
has because I asked him what is it you
want to do, and he said, ‘Whatever you
want me to do — this is what I am
interested in, and I am willing to do
whatever the agency wants from me.’
International Medical Corps works in
35 countries around the world and in
some of the neediest areas. Pranav is
one of the people who will go anywhere
to help out — from Libya to help with
the injured on the war front, where it
was very dangerous, to South Sudan
and Jordan with the Syrian refugees
and now in Nepal (after the earthquake).
Of course, he was in Liberia and
other countries in West Africa helping
out with the Ebola response, both in
terms of treating patients and training
local doctors and nurses. It’s been a
combination of wars, natural disasters,
and epidemics.
And anytime we asked him he would
not hesitate. As a matter of fact, a lot of
Pranav Shetty, center, at the IMC clinic in Misrata, Libya, treats patients injured in the battle raging a few miles away in 2011. His
times, he would come and volunteer,
colleagues at IMC are in awe of his willingness to go anywhere to help out: from war fronts to epidemic and other disaster zones.
even before we asked.
At International Medical Corps, there
COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
are a lot of people who are passionate
and real humanitarians who want to
Rabih Torbay is Senior Vice President, International
working for us, Pranav is very special in that he’s very
help, but what makes Pranav different is the fact that he
Operations, International Medical Corps. He oversees IMC’s
modest, he’s very easy going and you hardly ever hear him
had a very cushy job here in the US — had a very comfortglobal programs, including the Ebola response, in 31 councomplain about anything and he goes about doing the
able living in the US — but decided to put it aside and fultries on four continents and its staff and volunteers, includwork. And the work that he does, is just as close to perfecfill his passion for helping others, which is something that
ing Dr Pranav Shetty.
tion as it could get.
you don’t see very often.
He spoke to Aziz Haniffa.
Although we have close to 10,000 people worldwide

‘It’s breathtaking to watch him work’
Farrah Ghazi Zughni
Colleague

I

have been with International
Medical Corps for two-and-a-half
years, and for the first two years, I
worked with Pranav in Jordan
helping Syrian refugees and then
working on the Ebola crisis with Pranav.
IMC began responding to the Syria crisis in January 2012, working in the

camps and other refugee centers.
Seriously, and I am not exaggerating
here, he probably is one of my favorite
people. He was my boss for the first
two years and he’s just an incredible
human being.
He would always have his colleagues’s backs and he would always
ensure our safety and security, in
addition to being just one wonderful
and humble human being.

When you work on the field, there are
certain kinds of personalities you run
into over and over again. There is the
adventurist, the risk-taker, who is willing
to go into dangerous places or uncomfortable places and put themselves on the
line, and they bring in new programming
and they make a big difference in the
lives of beneficiaries.
And, then, there is the communications
person, very good at engaging with sub-

partners, donors.
Then we have the detailed, accountant
kind of people who spend hours on
spread-sheets and writing reports — just
the little minutiae — to make sure everything is on board, and that’s super-challenging because we have to make sure
that someone will come in, and make
sure that everything is in the right place.
Pranav, is the only person whom I’ve
ever met who excels in everyone of these

4M56

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M56

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Aaron Skolnik
Friend

W

‘He wanted to make
sure that he was fulfilled
in his practice’

e became kind of study
buddies as it were, and he
and I and another guy
named Joe Whetstone,
who went on to become a radiologist,
after class were constantly spending
time at the coffee shop, or spent the day
at Pranav’s house — Pranav and Joe
were roommates for a while — and
would settle down for three or four
hours of study and then punctuated the
studies by watching The Simpsons.
Pranav was quite the opposite of the
expression that the squeaky wheel gets
the grease. He has always been the kind
of guy to keep a low profile, never someone who sought a lot of recognition for
his efforts in medical school, but he was
always there, always doing the right
thing, even if nobody noticed.
That was one of the most desirable
qualities and one of the greatest qualities of his — that he always tries to
do the right thing... it doesn’t really
matter to him whether or not anyone
is watching.
I remember around the time we were
choosing specialties, we actually applied
for the same residency programs and we
went on a tour of the United States
together, where we interviewed at all
these places together. But when it
came to actually choosing specialties, I
Pranav Shetty and Aaron Skolnik on a pre med school trip.
COURTESY: AARON SKOLNIK
remember Pranav saying, I really didn’t
like anything in particular too much, so
let me choose a specialty where I make
trained to do — take care of people who had pretty much
sure I don’t have to do too much of any one particular thing
anything wrong with them at any time, at any station of life
but where my interest is always captured. For that reason
and I think, he found that after trying that, that it was a
he chose emergency medicine.
really good fit for him.
Pranav has very little interest in any luxuries, or accouI don’t think of him as a risk taker. I don’t think of him as
trements, or anything that goes with the traditional status
a particularly adventurous guy. He was never a sort of
of being a physician in the United States. I believe he wantextreme sport kind of guy. He simply puts his head down
ed to make sure that he was fulfilled in his practice and I
and gets the job done and he manages to take a break at
got the sense from him that he was frustrated by American
the middle of it and get some fun in as well.
medical practice in the US and going abroad was a way for
It’s not so much seeking adventure, but a little bit carehim to be free in sense, and be able to practice medicine
free. There’s a job to be done and one that he’s set his mind
unencumbered by all these things of insurance, payroll,
to, he’s just going to move forward and he’s going to achieve
hospital groups, and politics, and to do what he was really

3M55
Farrah Ghazi Zughni
facets.
It’s almost breathtaking to
watch him work, because he’s
one of those people, who in
the middle of the night if
there’s an issue with one of
our hospitals, gets up and
drives out there and he
makes things happen. If
there’s no car, there’s no
means, Pranav always finds a
way. It’s amazing when you
consider the hours he puts in

and the other responsibilities
he has.
My job in Jordan was my
first time working in this
kind of field. It was very new
and very stressful and I know
that a lot of the strengths I
have today is because I was
trained under Pranav.
As someone who worked
with him, this man’s patience
is endless. Everyone grew to
depend on Pranav at some
level because he excelled in
all of these qualities, and so,
whatever you were doing,
you’d want him to run your
plan or proposal by Pranav

because you know it was
going to come out so much
better.
I am not even talking about
the impact he had on people
— at the hospitals, the
patients. When he walks into
a hospital, people light up,
people depend on him and
you could see the trust is
there. It’s not just the
patients — it’s all the staff,
the sub-partners, it’s our
donors. Everyone, really
believes in him and trusts
him and he was really the
core of our team because he
was able to manage all these

what he needs to achieve and if there’s
some risk involved, that particularly
doesn’t bother him.
One of the main reasons he became
such a close friend of mine — both study
and non-study friends — was because he
never allows these things to cause him a
lot of internal stress.
He’s got a great sense of humor — a
very dry sense of humor — and he’s able
to laugh at some of these things, particularly in medical practice, which can
otherwise be a tremendous frustration or
a psychological obstacle that can’t be
overcome. He’s able to shrug some of
these things off and say that one thing
about this is it’s pretty funny and maybe
that’s what allows him to do the kind of
work that he does.
Pranav is pretty shy, reserved, but really
funny and brilliant once you got to know
him. (Speaking of Pranav being shy initially), I would like to take some credit
for bringing Nora (his wife) and him
together.
In the first year of medical school
Pranav and I went on a trip and he mentioned that he might have some romantic
interest in Nora. I said, Pranav, you have
to go for this. I’ve met the girl, she’s fantastic, and you really need to go and ask
her out and see what could happen.
Then several months later, when we
were on a trip to Italy for spring break
together, Pranav said, I want to let you
know that I did ask her out and we’ve
been seeing each other and it’s going really, really well, He kept it from us till he
knew it was more or less a sure thing. n

Dr Aaron Skolnik completed medical school at the
University of Pittsburgh, and then did residency in emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s/ Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, MA. He is an Assistant Professor
in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University
of Arizona College of Medicine, and works clinically in the
ICU as a medical toxicologist and is the Assistant Medical
Director of the Banner Poison & Drug Information Center.
He and Dr Pranav Shetty have been friends since their
medical school days at the University of Pittsburgh.
He spoke with Aziz Haniffa.

things and yet somehow he is
one of the most humble people I’ve ever met.
I know, if he was listening
to me talking about him, he
would turn red, be embarrassed, and be denying all of
it. But, that’s just the way he
is, and makes him an incredible person to be around. n
Farrah Ghazi Zughni is an
Ebola response desk
officer at the International
Medical Corps. She also
served with the Syria
Emergency Response Team.
She spoke to Aziz Haniffa.

Pranav Shetty trains an ambulance team
transporting some of the first patients to the
Bong County, Liberia, Ebola treatment unit
managed by the IMC.
COURTESY: INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M57

THE FIGHTER
‘My laboratory is actually the world around us…
For me, the greatest satisfaction in life comes
from service to others, not to serving my bank
account. ‘
Dr Jay Varma, who has been at the forefront of
fighting infectious diseases around the world,
including Ebola in New York City, and the winner
of the first India Abroad Doctor of the Year
Award, discusses the challenges of keeping the
world infection-free with P Rajendran.

Presented by

JAY VARMA

INDIA ABROAD
DOCTOR OF THE
YEAR AWARD
2014
For dedication during a
global crisis; for battling a
deadly disease; for selfless
service to humanity.

CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M58

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

D

r Jay Varma, Deputy
Commissioner for Disease
Control at New York City’s
Health Department, prefers
spending time in the field.
That is why the winner of the first India
Abroad Doctor of the Year won’t be in New
York on the night of the Awards ceremony,
June 12. Dr Varma is away in Sierra Leone,
working on Ebola in that African nation.
Likely breathing through plastic in a hot
body suit, examining pathogen-laded body
fluids, while his wife Dr Melissa Varma, who
has ‘dedicated her career to the care of children from diverse economic and cultural
backgrounds,’ accepts the Award for him.
But that is Dr Varma.
An epidemiologist for 15 years, one who
has worked in parts of the world bubbling
with novel and drug-resistant strains of
pathogens, Dr Varma has also helped conduct research that transformed the way
health authorities address the deadly combination of tuberculosis and HIV, and helping
the Chinese plan their response to outbreaks
of influenza and a new tick-borne virus, and
built systems to understand the causes of respiratory infections and detect food-borne
outbreaks.
Perhaps his best Dr House moments involve the detection of the cause of an E coli outbreak in Ohio and botulism in the Republic
of Georgia in the former Soviet Union.
Dr Varma’s parents, Ravi and Vijaya, were
natives of Thripunithara and Ernakulam,
neighboring areas in Cochin. Vijaya née
Kezhupillil, who inspires Dr Varma to this day, came to the
United States in 1963 to study organic chemistry at Purdue
University. Her work with her thesis adviser Herbert Brown
was what won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His father
Ravi finished his PhD in Pune, India, and joined his wife in
the US, where they were married in December 1964.
Dr Varma grew up in Belle Mead, New Jersey, just outside Princeton where his father worked at Squibb (now
Bristol-Myers Squibb) as a chemist and his mother did
post-graduate chemistry work at Princeton University
before taking a job with the Exxon Corporation.
But his mother did not have it easy. Diagnosed with lupus
in her 30s, she died in August 1989, one month before Jay
Varma went away to study at Harvard, but she gained her
son’s eternal admiration for the way she kept working at
home and office, pushing through tremendous pain with
enviable grit.
Dr Varma says he would never have been an itinerant
doctor if his work had been just intellectually rewarding or
socially meaningful, but not both.
“Whether I’m in Africa or working in different countries
in Asia, or working in New York City, that is my laboratory
— where I get the opportunity to say how do we close the
gap between what we already know and what we need to
actually do.”
While scientific curiosity is important for Dr Varma, he is
primarily driven by the practical consideration of saving
lives and preventing disease.
“We all breathe the same air. We all need reliable food,
sanitation, and shelter,” he says. And if he had his way,
there would be a stable and sturdy public health system for
everybody everywhere.
Speaking to India Abroad on a bad telephone line from
Sierra Leone (and keeping an eye on the clock because

THE FIGHTER

An epidemiologist for 15 years, Dr Jay Varma, left, has
worked in parts of the world bubbling with novel and drugresistant strains of pathogens. He has also helped conduct
research that transformed the way health authorities
address the deadly combination of tuberculosis and HIV.
COURTESY: JAY VARMA

there was a meeting he had to attend immediately after the
call), Dr Varma described aspects of his personal and professional life and why he does what he does.
We’d like to know something about your background —
about where your family comes from, what your parents did,
where did you grow up here.
My father grew up in Tripunithara, Kerala, and my mother in Ernakulam, India. My mother’s maiden name was
Kezhupillil. My mother moved to the US in 1963 to begin
her PhD studies in organic chemistry at Purdue University.
Her thesis adviser was Herbert Brown, who went on to win
the Nobel Prize in chemistry for work that my mother
worked with him on.
My father Ravi obtained his PhD in organic chemistry,
then moved to Indiana to join my mother. They were married in the US in December 1964. After my father finished
his PhD in Pune, India, she and my father moved to
Boston, where my father did post-graduate chemistry work
at Harvard and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
My brother (Deep Varma) was born in Worcester,
Massachusetts in 1967. He went on to graduate from
Harvard in 1989, get his medical degree at the University of
Pittsburgh, do a psychiatry residency and child psychiatry
residency also at the University of Pittsburgh, and then
marry and have a child (Kiran Varma), while practicing in
Madison, Wisconsin. He, unfortunately, died on July 11,
2009 in a scuba diving accident on Lake Michigan. His son

and ex-wife live in Madison, Wisconsin.
I was born in 1971 in Boston, and my parents moved in
1972 to Belle Mead, New Jersey (just outside Princeton).
My father took a job with Squibb (now Bristol-Myers
Squibb) as a chemist synthesizing new drugs. My mother
did post-graduate chemistry work at Princeton, then eventually took a job with Exxon Corporation.
My mother was diagnosed with lupus while in her 30s,
then eventually died in August 1989, one month before I
went away to college. My father moved a few years later to
take a job with the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda,
Maryland (which is part of the NIH — National Institutes
of Health), before retiring in 2001 and returning to India.
He re-married in the late 1990s, and his wife and he currently live in Tripunithara, Kerala, India.
What were the defining moments of your
childhood — things that defined you personally
and may have influenced you to take up a career
in medicine?
My parents, as with most Indian parents,
wanted their children to be doctors. While I
was always good at science, my real interest was
history, politics, public policy, and writing. My
favorite classes were world and US history, and
most of my high school and college time was
taken up working on newspapers. I was the edi- 4M60
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Jay Varma
of the few high school papers that was published weekly), and I was the Sports Editor
of The Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper for Harvard.
While in college, I majored in ‘History
and Science,’ a major unique to Harvard
that focuses on the history of science and
the role that scientific thought played in
government policies, culture, and society
over time. I wrote my undergraduate thesis
on the role of eugenics in determining US
immigration policy (Varma JK Eugenics
and immigration restriction: lessons for
tomorrow. JAMA. 1996 Mar 6;275(9):734–
737), a thesis that was graded summa cum
laude.
This academic experience got my intensely interested in public health, how medical
doctors can impact the health and welfare
of large populations.
Could you tell us some of the people that
influenced you – and how?
My most powerful memories of childhood involve my mother. Ill with lupus for
most of my childhood, my mother taught
me:

1. The paramount importance of education and learning in becoming a productive
member of society.
2. How to persevere through adversity.
My mother continued to work and produce
important accomplishments at work,
despite being horribly ill. Eventually, I
remember my father having to demand
that she stop working and focus on her own
health.
3. The importance of personal responsibility. With my mother ill for most of my
life, I learned to become as self-reliant as
possible, sometimes this was out of guilt
because I did not want to give my mother
more to do and other times it was out of
necessity, because she was not able to do as
much as she would have liked.
I attribute any success I have had in life
to her love for me and the lessons she
taught me.
Could you tell us something about your
wife and kids? How do they manage when
you’re away, given the attendant dangers in
some of the places you visit?
I met my wife in the first week of medical
school. We were immediately captivated by
each other. In addition to physical attraction, we immediately bonded because of a
shared sense of humor and core values.

Melissa has consistently inspired me with
her intelligence, humor, compassion,
courage, adventurous spirit, and moral conviction.
Our children are Asha (age 15), Sophie
(age 13), and Tejas (age 10 — will be 11
when the awards ceremony is held). They
are all wonderfully adventurous, kind,
funny, and compassionate people, traits
they most certainly got from their mother!
After degrees from Harvard, UCSD, what
made you decide against a comfortable private practice and opt for a position at the
CDC that called for more work, less independence and a salary at least a third less
than the average physician gets?
When I arrived at UCSD for medical
school, I met Dr Richard Besser, who had
recently started working at UCSD as a professor in pediatrics. He told me about the
infectious diseases work he had done with
CDC, including the Epidemic Intelligence
Service program. I immediately decided
that was the career I wanted: intellectually
rewarding and socially meaningful.
My work compensates me enough that I
can pay for my children to live in sufficient
comfort. For me, the greatest satisfaction in
life comes from service to others, not to
serving my bank account.

Jay Varma with his wife Melissa and their children, from right, Asha, Tejas and Sophie.Varma says,“My work compensates me
enough that I can pay for my children to live in sufficient comfort. For me, the greatest satisfaction in life comes from service to
others, not to serving my bank account.”
COURTESY: JAY VARMA

Spending each day
making a meaningful contribution to the
betterment of society is more important
than making more money.
Why did you decide to focus on infectious
diseases? Was that choice influenced by personal factors or academic ones?
In infectious diseases, we deal with the
host, the pathogen, and the environment.
In chronic diseases, we mostly just think in
terms of the host and the environment.
While both are challenging, infectious
diseases are particularly challenging
because we have very little control over how
the pathogen will evolve, how it will adapt
to its environment, its potential hosts in the
animal or insect world, and, as a result, the
control efforts are more challenging. I like a
challenge, a problem to be solved, and I
particularly like it when I’m one step
behind the solution trying to catch up.
What primarily do you find interesting
about your work?
Is it curiosity about the bewildering variety of evolutionary strategies pathogens use,
the need to help other humans, or something else altogether?
My work is fascinating, because it is both
intellectually rewarding and socially meaningful. If it is one but not the other, I don’t
think I would do it. It is intellectually
rewarding, because public health requires
understanding of and adapting programs
to science, culture, sociology, economics,
and human behavior.
What is exciting for me has two aspects.
One is that we really have no control over
this pathogen. It is always trying to get
away from us, escape from us in some way.
It’s trying to develop resistance or to develop some new way of infecting you.
Part of the challenge is the intellectual
challenge. The other part is the social
aspect of it – that to cure a disease you have
to understand the society in which that disease exists. Human diseases are driven as
much by the organism as the way we as a
society invest in certain things.
Poverty is an incredible driver of disease.
Environmental change is a driver of disease. Urbanization is a driver of disease.
So I think it is a combination of an intellectual challenge: having to solve a problem
that is constantly changing – the organism,
the bug – but also how that pathogen interacts with so many different parts of society.
Poverty also drives disease, you said. Do
you mean that poverty causes
stress and affects immunity to
disease, or that it is embedded
in an environment where sanitation and other similar issues
come into play?
The most obvious way that
poverty works is by increasing
the opportunities that you will
be exposed to bacteria because
there are sanitation issues,
because of crowding, pollution. 4M61
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Jay Varma
that poverty drives infectious diseases.
But we also see that poverty can be incredibly stressful to
people and that people who have less social or financial stability in their lives are more susceptible to certain diseases.
I think there probably is a biological mechanism by
which some people are susceptible to diseases because they
live in much more stressful circumstances. We don’t know
what that is, but we do know that it is a very real phenomenon.
But isn’t there evidence that stress does compromise your
immune system because the release of the hormone cortisol
at such a high rate, that your body is just trying to catch up
with repairs?
The problem I have with medics and others in science
often try to invoke what we know about the biochemistry of
the body to explain a theory. When we clearly are not at a
point where we can engineer the human body or fully
understand the reactions that go on. While it’s possible to
invoke a biochemical explanation, I don’t think we fully
understand that.
You mean that the zeitgeist – the currently fashionable
idea – can drive the way we think about medicine without
addressing the whole story?
One of the challenges I have when we look at health
problems is that there is a gap between what we know and
don’t know. And then there’s a gap between what we know
and what we actually do – what we implement.
For me, (the important question is about) the gap
between what we already know and what we do. We know
that some things are causing people to become ill. We
know the causes and we have a very good idea how to solve
them but how we implement (our ideas) is where there’s
this huge gap.
That is the reason I ended up doing the work that I do. I
could have chosen a career where I was in a laboratory and
trying to figure out what is it we don’t know and how can
we know.
My laboratory is actually the world around us.
Whether I’m in Africa right now or working in different
countries in Asia or working in New York City, that is my
laboratory – where I get the opportunity to say how do we
close the gap between what we already know and what we
need to actually do.
Could you tell us about working on TB in Thailand? What
were the challenges, given the language and educational
barriers, red tape, the possible lack of resources, and the
fact that TB is often resistant to antibiotics?
I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, from 2003 to 2008, working as CDC’s Southeast Asia regional adviser for TB control. I conducted most of my work in Thailand, Cambodia,
and Vietnam, three countries that are at various stages of
development.
What I enjoyed most about my work was helping each of
these countries work toward reducing deaths from TB, particularly in people with HIV infection. Working with partners at the national and province level, I was able to help
them demonstrate and then implement new strategies to
diagnose and treat both diseases.
The challenge is usually not what to do, but how to do it;
finding a way to implement evidence-based programs in
different societies, with different resources and political
systems.
What were the rewards?
What you have in those countries is that there is a
tremendous desire by many people to (get) their country up
to a higher level of development, where the economy is

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Dr Craig Spencer, right, after the latter was declared free of the Ebola virus,
which he got from working with Ebola patients in Guinea. Jay Varma was the ‘incident commander’ for Ebola in
New York.
Health workers carry the body of an Ebola victim for burial at a cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in
December 2014.Varma is now in the country to aid Ebola response to get to zero cases.
BAZ RATNER/REUTERS AND LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

functioning better, where the health of people is better.
In Asia, they look at Singapore and South Korea and,
across the ocean, they look at the United States, and they
aspire to that. I found that the work I was doing in those
countries even though you were faced with substantial
challenges – there is a bureaucracy, there are political
issues, there are all sorts of problems — I found that actually to be part of the fun and the challenge.
As I said, the gap between what we know and what we
can actually do is very great. And the solutions vary
depending upon the culture, the resources available, the
political will. I found working in these difficult environ-

ments to actually be part of the excitement.
Sometimes you want to bang your head
against the wall and say why is it so difficult
(laughing). But you realize that is the same
problem in the United States. We are a fairly
resource-rich country, but there are very practical problems we still have not solved.
So one of the things I like about working in
other countries is that I could look at (the
problems) objectively and say what I think the
solution is. But (also understand) why some
problems developed the way that they did and

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Jay Varma
then try to answer them (after) understanding that.
I spent a lot of time working in very rural and poor areas
of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. What we were trying
to do was to show one of the reasons many people were
dying of tuberculosis was because they also had an HIV
infection.
The programs to control these diseases are structured in
what we call a vertical way. Somebody comes in and
decides to fund a program and it works very much in a
zone – a zone with its own doctors. Often people don’t see
and understand that their patients are suffering from other
problems, and the problems that are contributing to why
their program is having trouble.
So I spent a lot of time working in poor areas, working
with people to review and analyze their data, and then try
to collect this information, to show them how, if they could
strengthen the way that they diagnosed and treat HIV, they
could also address their tuberculosis problem.
I also worked on an important research study. We were
very concerned that people with HIV were not being diagnosed with tuberculosis soon enough because the signs and
symptoms of the disease can be very different.
I worked very closely with people in Bangkok, people in
two areas of Cambodia, and in Ho Chi Minh City in
Vietnam to design a very large research study where we
collected data on close to 2,000 people with HIV infection.
We did a very large analysis to try to understand what are
the factors that predict why one person has tuberculosis
and another person does not.
The results of this study helped us show that if you want

to diagnose tuberculosis in somebody with HIV – and
tuberculosis is the leading cause of death in people with
HIV – you have to use a different approach that you would
use normally. You have to ask about different symptoms
and do different studies.
Because I did this work very closely with people from the
governments of those countries we were able to change the
health policies in those countries to a new approach.
That’s why I worked very quickly with the World Health
Organization and was eventually able to use this research
to help change the internationally recommended approach
to how you diagnose tuberculosis in people with HIV.
I also worked in a poor province in Cambodia called
Banteay Meanchey (close to Angkor Wat, where the famous
Hindu temples are located). The people were very affected
by the war in Cambodia, but they were very committed to
trying to do something to improve their (conditions) there.
Can you describe any patients there that affected you a
lot?
What was very striking to me was when I would travel to
Cambodia, and you would walk into a health center. And
the health center there would really be just a small wooden
structure, some type of wooden shack. When you walk in,
there would be a series of beds — maybe 10 or 20 — all
made simply of wood.
There would be people lying on all these beds who were
emaciated and frail and really had no nursing care. And the
people I would talk to would explain to you how they
became ill. Often they would tell you extraordinary stories
about how a family member — often it would be a woman
telling you about her husband who had also died of tuberculosis and HIV — and how (she) also had tuberculosis.
That experience of seeing it was really a question of geog-

Jay Varma, third from right, testifies at a Health Hearing on HPV in New York City in January.
WILLIAM ALATRISTE FOR THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL

raphy that they were dying there. Had they been sick in the
United States, or in Western Europe, they would have been
treated, their husband would still be alive, their children
would not be orphaned, and they would not be in a situation in which there were very few resources to make them
healthy.
For me, those images, those experiences of having been in
these hospitals myself, is always a very important driving
factor. Often when we study the epidemiology… we look at
tables, we look at numbers, but it’s really the experience (in
the field) that makes a difference.
That’s what makes it real, I guess.
Yeah, it makes you want to continue the work that you’re
doing, but harder. One of the challenges I face in my job is
that when you get to a level when you are very high up you
don’t get enough time outside the office, working with the
people, talking to people, listening to people, who are most
impacted by the decisions that you make.
I feel that it is a weakness in me that as I’ve gotten higher
up in my career, I don’t spend enough time on a daily basis
going and listening to the people who are most heavily
impacted by the work that I do.
Now it feels like it’s very easy to keep myself busy managing large projects and making decisions, but not to see and
experience things that make you passionate about it.
Despite the language barriers, was it comparatively easier
working in China, given the better medical training and
infrastructure there?
My work in China was different than in other countries,
because the technical knowledge and resources are at a
higher level than in many other countries. Nevertheless,
the work was very rewarding, because there remain many
large public health problems, which require innovative
solutions to fit into the Chinese context.
While in China, I worked closely with the
Chinese government on its response to outbreaks for influenza and a new tick-borne
virus, helped build new systems to understand causes of respiratory infections and
detect food-borne outbreaks, and provided
assistance to the national government on
policies related to vaccinations and disease
detection.
What were some of the most interesting
experiences you’ve had overall – whether in
these countries or outside?
My most memorable experiences have
involved fighting off outbreaks of infectious
diseases in different communities.
1.
In 2001, I spent 4 weeks in
Ohio working on E coli outbreak at a county
fair. My initial study found that people who
attended a dance held in a barn on the last
night of the fair had the highest risk of getting sick. But I could not understand why.
I visited the barn and took samples of
sawdust from the floor and
swabbed the walls and ceiling
and found that the entire
building was contaminated
with E coli.
I discovered that a cow exhibit had been held in the barn
earlier in the week, that feces
from the cows had contaminated the sawdust, that surfaces of
the building were contaminat4M63
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the barn, and that E coli could

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how that affects
your work?
Jay Varma
It’s part of the challenge. You work
with an organism that will change
over time. (Despite) everything that
live for months on the ceiling and
you do to control it, it will try to surwalls of the building.
vive. I worked on tuberculosis, HIV,
2. From 2002 to 2003, I helped
sexually transmitted bacteria like
control botulism in the Republic of
gonorrhea, and on salmonella,
Georgia. It’s an ancient culture in
chigella — many different infections
which home canning of food is
all of which are trying desperately to
prized. But unsafe canning can lead
escape our use of antibiotics.
to a lethal infection called botulism
There are two areas of work. One
that paralyzes the muscles and stops
is how we humans get antibiotics in
you from breathing.
ourselves. The other big problem
For two years, I visited health
that continues to not be addressed
facilities, observed people can food
very well is antibiotics used in aniin their homes and conducted
mals and the environment.
research to show how changes in
We use a tremendous amount of
canning practices could control the
antibiotics in producing food — for
disease.
the feeding of chickens, for example,
You have expressed concern about
and now with the farming in fish
the need for better disease detection
and aquaculture. And this actually
in China. One of the world’s top
over time is going to continue to creeconomies, it has been the cradle for
ate new problems for us, because
quite a few newly identified diseases,
antibiotic resistance does not just
including avian flu and SARS.
stay in animals.
Is it happening in the poor rural
What we’ve seen with all these
areas or also in the cities?
infectious diseases, any (antibiotics)
The cities have the same dynamics Among his many contributions to tackling infectious diseases is the tremendous amount of work
in the environment and other animals
that the United States and other coun- he put into containing the spread of drug-resistant TB in countries like Thailand and China.
will eventually get into humans.
tries have, which is that you have many COURTESY: JAY VARMA
For me, the biggest challenge has
people living in close proximity to each
been in tuberculosis. It is a disease that we
medical system and a corresponding faith in
People will start to see diseases emerging
other at many different levels of income.
have a very effective treatment for. Since
alternatives that are not evidence-based.
in India. There’s more infrastructure and
Most of the diseases that cause major epithe 1960s we’ve had antibiotics we can use.
Given that situation, do you think there’s a
development to integrate the Indian econodemics originate in animals and then
Unfortunately, there has not been very
chance of evidence-based medicine catching
my with the rest of the world. Once that
spread to humans. The contact between
much research into developing new drugs
on?
happens, you will start to see this (the
humans and animals in China is much
to treat this disease.
It’s an excellent question. India has the
emergence of new diseases in India) happen
more intense than it is in Europe or the
Now we face the very real threat of havadvantage — compared to other countries,
more and more.
United States.
ing people with tuberculosis that can’t be
China for example — because of language.
The same is true in other parts of Africa
Far more people like to buy from a live
cured at all.
Because English is the international lanas (parts of it) develop more, and you have
market — where the animal is killed fresh
I saw this first hand when I was in
guage of scientific and medical communithis close and immediate connection (with
for you to go home and cook.
Thailand. We had a very large outbreak of
cation and because Indians study English
surrounding areas) you will see this hapAnd there’s the rapid urbanization. Cities
drug-resistant tuberculosis that occurred in
from a very early age, (it is) a tremendous
pen.
and towns are being built in areas that
a refugee camp in the center of Thailand. I
advantage that India has that other counEbola is a perfect example. Over the past
were wild and underdeveloped. Because
was the lead investigator for this outbreak.
tries do not. It’s hard to underestimate that
30 years (outbreaks) have occurred in areas
there are so many people, and there are so
The outbreak was only recognized when
advantage because you have immediate
that were small, out of the way villages. The
many opportunities for interaction between
some of the refugees were resettled in the
access to information from around the
outbreaks burned out because the people
humans and animals the opportunity for a
United States and were then diagnosed
world.
were not (connected) to a large population.
disease to jump from animal to human is
with drug-resistant tuberculosis in the US.
The other thing that separates India, and
This outbreak (in 2014) occurred in a
much greater.
They had not been diagnosed in the
will make India even a greater country in
border area — where people cross borders
And because China now has so much of a
refugee camp.
the future, is an open democratic society.
very easily — and once it got into an urban
direct link with the rest of the world,
I did a tremendous amount of work trySo (there is) the opportunity to have critical
setting it became possible for it to then
because so many products are made in
ing to figure out how this bacteria was
debates — that sometimes hampers develspread through three countries and impact
China that there are so many flights that go
being spread from person to person in the
opment — but also creates the opportunity
the United States, Europe and many places
into and out of so many different areas of
refugee camp so that we could treat it in
for people to be creative and then to eventhat did not think they would see this disthe country, that you have that opportunity
the refugees, both to improve their health,
tually adopt evidence-based strategies.
ease.
for a disease to jump from animal to
but also to prevent it being
I do think those things (the current situaThe combination of population density,
human, and for a human to go on an airexported to the United States.
tion) will change over time. Once the infracontact with animals, and the connection
plane and travel with that disease.
In China, we saw there were
structure for the country becomes greater,
to the rest of the world is really what is surIt is said sanitation has saved more lives.
very high rates of tuberculosis
and more people escape poverty, they will
prising, which (explains the) epidemics of
Given the combination of a higher populaamong people working in hosdemand better services, they will demand
infectious diseases we’re seeing every year.
tion density, and weaker health and sanitapitals. One of the areas I was
better health care, and they will eventually
SARS, H1N1 influenza, MERS — the
tion systems, is India more at risk than
trying to work on was trying to
get to the point where they will question
recent respiratory virus — and now Ebola
China?
get people to be concerned
their doctors and request more appropriate
are all examples of diseases that originate
The challenge in India is very great. I
about infection control in hostreatment.
primarily in animals, spread to humans
would say that once India’s economy
pitals because the reason
Despite some recent promise, antibiotic
through some type of contact, and then
becomes as closely integrated with the rest
health care workers are getting
resistance seems to be a growing problem, a
spread rapidly to humans because there’s
of the world as China is, you will start to
4M64
sick is because patients are
point highlighted to us by people like Arjun
traffic and movement.
see the same types of problems (from
coming in with tuberculosis
Srinivasan of the CDC. Could you discuss
In India, there is a lot of distrust in the
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Jay Varma
that is not being recognized. Particularly if
they have drug-resistant tuberculosis they will
get treated with some antibiotics and they will
continue to go to the hospital and continue to
cough. So it will be spread through contact in
health care facilities.
I’ve had a lot of experience working in areas
where this type of drug resistance really
threatens the success of our public health programs.
In the United States, to treat one drug-resistant person with tuberculosis is extremely
expensive. It costs anywhere near 100,000
dollars to cure somebody of drug-resistant
tuberculosis, whereas it would cost far less to
treat somebody with regular tuberculosis. So
it’s become a very big problem in many of the
areas I work in.
How did the move to the New York City
health department from the CDC come about?
At the time I was in China, there used to be
a limit to the time you can spend overseas for
the CDC. They wanted you to go back to their
headquarters in Atlanta for a few years and
then you could go overseas again. I was reaching that limit. At that time, it was eight years.
I was looking at opportunities. I didn’t have
a great desire to go back to Atlanta — I was in
China at that time — because I wanted to have
the opportunity to see and experience new
problems and opportunities.
I felt that if I returned to the headquarters facility I
might not get some new and exciting opportunities because
you’re in a much bigger bureaucracy.
I saw a job advertisement for the job that I have now —
as deputy commissioner of the health department — and I
was able to discuss with the commissioner of health at the
time, Dr Tom Farley, and he was interested in hiring me.
New York is such a diverse city that my experience in working in other countries would be very applicable to the work
(in the city).
Number two, New York City has always been at the forefront of innovation in public health. At the time, this was a
real golden opportunity because the mayor of the city at the
time — Michael Bloomberg — was a unique person. He’s
the only person that has a school of public health named
after him who is also a very powerful political figure.
This was a great opportunity to work in a city where
there were exciting health problems, where there was a
tremendous enthusiasm and interest in working out problems, and there’s a long tradition of immigration.
Could you tell us something about how you got involved
with the effort to fight Ebola?
In my job I am responsible for all infectious disease control issues for the City of New York. We are very aware how
close New York is to the rest of the world. If a disease is
going to be imported into the United States we can predict
quite reliably that it might end up in New York City. We
began planning very on how we would manage a case if it
came to New York City. So it was very natural for me to be
in that position (leading the effort against a potential Ebola
threat).
Is there something about Ebola you find particularly
vicious and/or interesting?
Like all infectious diseases, Ebola finds a way to exploit

Jay Varma has chosen to work with the New York City health department as the city has always been at the
forefront of innovation in public health.
COURTESY: JAY VARMA

our weaknesses — whether it’s the human immune system,
our health services, our trust in government and each
other. In the US, only four people developed Ebola, two
who were exposed in Africa and two who were exposed at
one hospital in Texas.
Primarily what we experienced, and had to control, was
an epidemic of Ebola fear — distrust of science and scientific experts, conspiratorial thinking, and lack of faith in
government’s ability to keep people safe.
We worked so hard to control Ebola in New York City
both during our preparations and in our response to one
case, because we knew how important it was to reassure
people that there would be no outbreak in the US.
When a disease has such a high fatality rate, we knew
there was no margin of error for mistakes to occur in New
York City. In Africa, you are seeing an epidemic of disease
that has killed thousands of people, but you also see it
propagated by fear — distrust of modern medicine, conspiratorial thinking, lack of faith in government.
The epidemiology is fascinating and disturbing.
Unfortunately, the same problems we encounter everywhere of marginalized groups lacking faith in government
services (often for good reason) are amplified here and
exploited by an opportunistic, lethal pathogen.
Unstable housing, migrant labor, sex work, local government politics, drug use, untreated mental illness, and
poverty have combined with lack of trust in the health system and fear of quarantine to keep the case load from
reaching zero.
There are lots of important science questions that need to
be answered, but the most important question is not scien-

tific, but practical: How do we help build a resilient public
health system, one that collects basic health statistics, monitors for epidemics, and controls epidemics effectively.
We all breathe the same air. We all need reliable food,
sanitation, and shelter. Epidemics anywhere can become
epidemics everywhere. The work we do in Sierra Leone is
as important as the work we do in America.
In your view, what about Ebola caused such world panic in
a way that other infectious diseases that claim more lives do
not?
The high death rate, the graphic way in which people die,
its origins in a seemingly far-off and mysterious land.
Given that you are at the operational end of things, how do
you keep abreast of all the new literature on the subject of
infectious diseases? Do you ever begin to feel overwhelmed?
It is very difficult to keep up with the science, especially
because I cover so many infectious diseases. I used to be
very dedicated about reading medical journals... but it has
become much more (difficult) to do so. Over time I think
I’ve become much more efficient at getting the important
points out of a research article or a scientific discussion.
You have to train your mind to do that. But it’s very difficult.
What are your future plans?
I don’t know for sure. We will be in New York for two
more years because my oldest daughter Asha definitely
wants to finish her high school here (at the Bronx School of
Science). I do miss international work, so there’s a possibility we may move and take another position internationally.
But we haven’t decided what the future holds. Hopefully, it
will be something interesting. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M65

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He enriches the family’
Dr Melissa Varma
Wife and classmate

J

ay intensely dedicates himself to all
aspects of his life. He is one of the few
people I know who truly cares about
everything.
He has been successful in his career because
he has a strong desire to make a difference in
the world by improving public health.
He has been an amazing husband, supporting and encouraging me in my work and in
daily life. He always finds ways to make life
better and easier for me. I am reminded daily
of how much he cares for all of us by all the little things he does. I have been fortunate to
have such an amazing friend for the past 22
years.
Asha, Sophie and Tejas say he parents with
an iron fist, but that is because he wants them
to work as hard as he did and to become successful in life. They feel he is an encyclopedia

of knowledge and teaches them something
new every day. He keeps them entertained by
kicking the soccer ball, playing horse on the
basketball court or reading a story to them.
When they were younger he would captivate
them with his imaginary tales of Princesses
Asha and Sophie and Prince Tejas.
He enriches the family with his Indian heritage by ensuring we travel regularly to Kerala
to visit his family. And while traveling, he is
always reading the Mahabharata and
Ramayana to us, teaching us about Indian culture.
His relatives are important to him.
Fortunately, we have been able to develop a
special relationship with all of them despite
the distance. n
Dr Melissa Varma has dedicated her career
to the care of children from diverse economic
and cultural backgrounds.
She responded by email to P Rajendran.

Left, Jay and Melissa Varma
on their wedding day in
Kerala.
Right and below, Jay and
Melissa’s family time.
COURTESY: JAY VARMA and RAVI VARMA

Presented by

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M66

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He is self-motivated, brave, self-driven’
Ravi Varma
Father

A

ll of Jay’s formative years were spent
in New Brunswick (New Jersey). Our family
spent some beautiful years in this community with very nice neighbors, lots of
sprawling lawns all around for the children to play
in.
Both Deep (Jay’s elder brother) and Jay had their
early education at the local Montgomery County
school. We used to read a lot to the children. Deep
was extremely studious and bright, Jay was on the
high average side. Both used to help us in our large
yard with our intensive gardening of vegetables gardens.
In 1977, after training at Princeton University,
(His mother) Vijaya (VJ) joined Exxon, Rahway, New
Jersey, as a research worker.
Even as a young boy, Jay was more affectionate and
concerned about his parents, brother and others.
Both Deep and Jay went to the well-known
Lawrenceville School (suburban Princeton) from the
8th grade. While his brother broke all academic
records, Jay gradually blossomed and evolved so
much that he became the student hard-frame
computer manager and editor of the school
newspaper during the last two years of his
schooling.
For summer jobs, Deep and Jay worked at the
Princeton YMCA in camps for children of many
ages, cutting lawns or painting for the township. Helping me cut our lawn and yard on
weekends was also one of their activities which
they did willfully.
In mid-1978, VJ fell ill during a trip to
Tucson, Arizona, forcing us to take the next
flight home. She was
diagnosed with SLE (lupus), a debilitating disease.
Both VJ and I read a lot about it and knew
that she had at best 5 to 10 years more to live.
She continued her work, in spite of the doctors’
and my repeated advice to the contrary, just to
Left, Jay dressed up for a school competition in 1981.
give the best education to the children before
she died.
Right, with his father Ravi and son Tejas.
Finally, after much pressure from me, she took COURTESY: RAVI VARMA and JAY VARMA
disability from work in mid-1986. Those years
a federal government job at the National Cancer Institute,
were the hardest for all of us in the family, especially for
Rockville, Maryland, and re-married in 1995.
Deep and Jay, with VJ having to be hospitalized from days
Both our children got married. I retired from my job in
to weeks for treatments over the next 10 years.
late 2001 and relocated to spend my retirement years in
I was always concerned how this would affect the children
Kerala with our elder kith and kin.
psychologically. When asked in their later high school years
It was during one of his many visits to Rockville and our
about the children’s birthdays I used to say that every day is
chats that Jay expressed his inclination to join the PHS
their birthday; all of us (would) go out and eat together.
after completing his requirements for a licensed MD. His
Years went by, with the quality of life in the family declinreal professional life began after he joined the PHS.
ing gradually. Deep graduated magna cum laude from
Jay always has been gentle and genial. He has borne a lot
Harvard, and Jay graduated from Lawrenceville
of grief during his formative years. Both Deep and Jay
School cum laude as valedictorian of the school that year.
never became attracted to drugs or alcohol. Jay is still a teeTheir mother died on July 31, 1989. Deep had secured
totaler. His friends have spoken often to me of his good and
a one-year extension from medical school at UCSF to be
lovable qualities, one of the few reasons why he was the
with his mother. He spent one year at McLean Hospital,
valedictorian when he completed his MD at UCSD.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, while Jay joined Harvard as an
He has repeatedly told me that he had a nuclear family
undergraduate. In September 1990 I moved to

when he was young and he does not want his children to be so nuclear. Melissa seems to agree. That is
why they have three children.
Whenever they visit India, they bring the children
along and want the children to spend most time with
the children of his cousins and relatives. Sometimes
he has very strong views, with which I do not always
agree. As Harry Reasoner of CBS said once — growing older (and experienced) one often starts questioning the validity of one’s convictions.
I wish to point out two incidents that live in my
mind.
Incident 1: Jay was the editor of the school newspaper. A competitive girl student wrote a long article that was not published because the pages were
limited. The girl led a demonstration to protest
that. Instead of arguing, Jay discussed the matter
with the relatively new and respected headmaster and followed his
advice. Things cooled off very soon.
Incident 2: A few days after his
mother’s death or a year later (I don’t
remember when), I was sleeping
home alone. Jay came home around
midnight begging me not to get angry.
He described what happened. I consoled him telling him that everything
would be okay, that he had done the
right thing, and we would get a
lawyer.
Jay had left in the family van for an
outing with some of his friends from
the Princeton area. Later, they bought
a few cans of beer. Jay offered to drive
and they assembled at a small lower
school in Princeton. His friends knew
that Jay did not drink even beer. The
police soon arrived, the boys ran helter-skelter, everyone
was arrested and taken to the police station.
Several weeks later, everyone assembled in court with
lawyers. Jay was the first one released. All his friends
said he was innocent. He came home and told me
that the lawyers exchanged a lot of harsh words and he
was then let go.
Jay majored in history and science at Harvard since he
was not certain if he should study law or the sciences. This
incident seems to be the one where he sort of made up his
mind not to pursue law!
Jay has accomplished a good deal. He is self-motivated,
brave, self-driven, liked by his friends and a good planner.
His stepmother joins me in congratulating Jay for being
selected for the India Abroad Doctor of the Year Award. n
Ravi Varma retired to Kerala, India in 2001. He lives in
Tripunithara.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

rom the first days
of Harvard to the
present, Jay has
demonstrated an unwavering commitment to
justice, a drive for excellence, and a level of wisdom beyond his years.
That he has focused
his convictions on protecting public health,
both in the US and
abroad, and been a
strong leader with a
steady hand during
times of crisis in New
York, comes as no surprise to those who have
known him the longest.
Nor is it a surprise that
Jay has achieved success
while being a caring husband, father and friend.
While some of Jay’s
convictions have taken
him far, some like his
taste in music can be
ridiculous. I recall many
arguments during freshman year when Jay
would insist that the
only band worth listening to was Led Zeppelin
and that anything newer
was a just a weak copy.
He came around eventually and is now an
expert in all new music
and still goes to shows
while the rest of are still
stuck in the past. n
Tom Rousakis is
Senior Managing
Director, Ernst & Young
Infrastructure Advisors,
LLC.
He responded by email
to P Rajendran.

aya Kumar Varma:
Passionate, articulate, incisive, insightful. Intensely
witty, intensely smart....
intensely loud... :) Adventurous,
independent, selfless, loyal. Loving
and caring about all.
I first met Jay over 25 years ago
during our first week of freshman
year at Harvard. Little did we
know that we had grown up only a
town away from each other — it
was fate that we met at college.
We became instant and life-long
friends and roommates for our
sophomore through senior years.
His intensity was immediately
evident when we played a pick-up
basketball tourney in our dorm
room and he nearly shattered the
backboard! I knew at that
moment that I was in the presence of both a great intellect, and
a fanatical Celtics fan.
Jay appeared to be an assimilated, fully American young man —
deeply knowledgeable about
American sports (Read: Celtics)
rock music (Led Zeppelin)
movies (Spinal Tap), obscure culture (virtually
everything). Yet he was and remains deeply
connected to his Indian heritage.
This is evident in so much of his life, from
simple observances, to references to his family
in India, to food — a lot of food. Jay has been
our cultural tour guide through the world of
Indian cuisine. I could ask for no more lively
or worthy a guide.

‘The world is better because
of Jay and his work’
Nor could my family ask for more caring and
wonderful friends in Melissa, Asha, Sophie
and Tejas. Seeing my three sons play soccer
and share Rolling Stones covers with Tejas is
one my great joys.
From those early days in college, it was clear
that Jay would have a profound impact on me
and our roommates. Over the years it became
clear that Jay would also have such an impact

on this great city and on the world — on their
safety and their generational betterment.
The world is better because of Jay and his
work, and I am better for his friendship. n
Jacob Silverman is President of Duff &
Phelps, valuation and corporate finance
advisers.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

‘Fortunate to have a first row seat to watch Jay grow’
Dr Ajay Ananda
Friend

I

met Jay in the fall of 1993, and
he has been a close friend ever
since. I consider myself fortunate to have a first row seat to
watch him grow and mature from
exceptional medical student, to
first-rate doctor, to loving husband, and now devoted father.
All the while, he has had a keen

capacity to balance his family life
while pursuing a professionally fulfilling and altruistic career.
In a materialistic world, it is rare
when the most capable among us
pursue careers geared to academic
excellence and the service of others.
In high school, Jay was at the
very top among the most prestigious prep schools in the US. From
there he attended Harvard where

he also excelled. From there, he
was a stellar student in medical
school, where he was once again in
the top percentile, both in grades
and in performance on his medical
boards.
He then pursued a career in academic medicine traveling to many
underserved areas working on
global solutions to endemic medical problems. He currently is in
one of the least savory places on

earth, Sierra Leone, assisting in the
eradication of the Ebola virus.
With some people this would
merely be a list of career
achievements. In regard to Jay,
this is a true reflection of his
inner character. n
Dr Ajay Ananda is a neurosurgeon based in Los Angeles.
He responded by email to P
Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M68

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘One of the brightest stars
in the field of public health’

‘I’ve know
him to
be always
inspiring’
Dr Andrew D Beros
Friend

I

have known Jay since
beginning medical
school with him in
1993. Throughout the
years of our friendship I
have know him to be
always knowledgeable,
inspiring, equitable, motivated and bright.
He and I were cofounders of a student-run
clinic in medical school,
which gave students the
opportunity to begin practicing medicine and
engaging the community
before even receiving our
medical degrees.
Jay was also our class
valedictorian and succinctly conveyed the motivations and feelings of a large
group of graduating students
in a way that made us all feel
special and unique as individuals while touching on the
salient points that affected us
all during our rigorous years
in medical school.
Jay has continually fostered an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity, service to
our community, challenging
and thoughtful discourse and
kind and empathetic concern
for his fellow citizens. I know
he has carried these qualities
forward into his post-graduate years and beyond.
His many outstanding
qualities have served him
and others admirably and
have propelled him to a position of respect and authority
while maintaining a profound sense of service and
humility.
Dr Andrew D Beros is a
surgeon based in San Diego,
California.
He responded by email to
P Rajendran.

Dr Richard Besser,
Mentor

I

first met Jay when he was a medical
student at the University of
California, San Diego. I was his
adviser on one of his research projects. I remember having long conversations with Jay hoping that he would
pursue a career in public health.
He clearly had a desire to have an impact
on the health of people everywhere. I’ve
worked with hundreds of students at all
levels and Jay is clearly one of the smartest
I have encountered.
Over the past 20 years, Jay has had an
incredible career; he is one of the brightest
stars in the field of public health.
He is one of the rare public health leaders who has had big impact at the city,
national, and international levels.
Last fall during the national fear
around Ebola, when I was looking for a
public health leader to join me on camera (at ABC) to answer questions from
the public, I chose Jay. We spoke to an
audience of more than 10 million people,
and Jay hit just the right tone. He has a
tremendous ability to speak clearly and
plainly about complex health issues during a time of crisis.
I am sure that Jay will continue to lead
in public health and I can’t wait to see
what he does next. n

have known Jay for 22 years as a med
school classmate and very good friend. I
also had the added experience of working
very closely with him on our med student newspaper. I have also known his wife for 22 years as
she too is a med school classmate.
I quickly recognized that Jay was a rare breed.
He possesses a truly unique combination of
high levels of both intelligence and compassion.
He is a true believer in the notion that it is possible to make the world a better place for all.
Furthermore, he manages to live a life where
it is a foregone conclusion that service to the
greater good is his life’s work, yet he expects
nothing pretentious or ceremonial in return
and he casts no judgment on or shows resent-

ment for those of us who choose a different
path.
In other words his ego is nowhere to be found
in his already remarkable career and list of
achievements.
In addition to intelligence and compassion
Jay demonstrates a remarkable ability to get
things done. When he encounters an arena
which may be foreign to him, he is not afraid to
ask questions and learn quickly whatever he
needs to know.
This last quality in particular is in my opinion
a predictor of success within the Indian
Diaspora. Jay is definitely an exemplary member
of such a diverse and accomplished group. n
Dr Manoj Waikar is a psychiatrist based in
Los Gatos, California.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

‘Jay is the model
for a competent,
action-oriented
expert’
Dr Thomas A Farle,
Former boss

I

hired Dr Jay Varma to lead our division to prevent infectious diseases. He
dealt with drug-resistant tuberculosis,
a ricin incident, HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases, immunizations, and
countless disease outbreaks.
He is the model for a competent,
action-oriented expert. New York City
under his leadership is in good hands. n
Dr Thomas Farley is a former health
commissioner of New York City, and CEO of
Public Good Projects, a nonprofit that uses
the mass media to change health culture.
He responded by email to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M69

THERE SHE IS,
THE NEW MISS
AMERICA
When Nina Davuluri took the Miss America 2014
crown, a title that by definition hailed her as a central
figure of nationalism, she broke through a rigid
barrier. She changed history. Since then her
horizons have only broadened.
Chaya Babu finds out there is no stopping the winner
of the India Abroad Face of the Future Award.

Presented by

NINA

DAVULURI

INDIA ABROAD
FACE OF THE
FUTURE AWARD
2014
For breaking stereotypes; for
achieving a spectacular
victory; and for going
where no Indian American
has gone before.

MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M70

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

W

hen we think of the ‘allAmerican girl,’ what
comes to mind?
Perhaps iconic images
of Marilyn Monroe or
even little Shirley
Temple. Or fast forwarding to this millennium, present-day pop sensations such as
Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, both
frequently labeled America’s sweethearts.
What do all of these have in
common? The blonde, blue-eyed standard
of beauty rarely goes unchecked in mainstream cultural spaces in America. The
characters mentioned never had their darling good looks questioned or the authenticity of their belongingness challenged —
they were meant to be in the spotlight, to be
admired and adored as our country’s ideal
of perfect American-ness.
When Nina Davuluri took the Miss
America 2014 crown, a title that by definition hailed her as a central figure of
nationalism out of 53 women, each representing a different state, she broke
through a rigid barrier. She changed history. Known in high school amidst a sea of
white as ‘the little Indian girl who did the
little Indian dance,’ the New York-born
Davuluri was suddenly thrust into a position known and held dear by millions of
Americans, one no Indian-American
woman had stepped into before.
“Every single one of us could have done
the job,” she said of the 53 contestants. “It’s
just a matter of how the cards fall that
night.”
Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean her win
wasn’t significant. On the other side of the
world, in Andhra Pradesh, little girls at the
school run by Davuluri’s grandmother
basked in the glory and pride of such a victory: A woman who looks like them was
called Miss America for the first time.
Until 1940, rule #7 of the qualifying criteria that must be met in order to enter the
pageant stated that ‘contestants must be of
good health and of the white race.’ To meet
this, aspiring Miss Americas had to trace
their ancestry back through generations.
For Davuluri, she’s the first generation in
her family born on American soil — no digging is needed to figure that one out. The
rules have changed, and so have the times.
But not everyone is up to speed. Upon her
tear-filled acceptance of her crown and sash
on the stage in Atlantic City that fall night,
the Twittersphere erupted with vitriol. The
disapproval at the judges’ choice was
strong, and the hatred expressed swift. The
insults ranged from racist slurs that mistook her as Arab, jokes about ties to terrorist groups, mere shock that an Indian
woman could win, and more.
‘This is Miss America… Not Miss Foreign
Country,’ one Twitter user wrote.
But, and perhaps as expected, Davuluri
maintained her poise and was unruffled.
When she spoke about it later, she stressed
the overwhelming positivity she received

Nina Davuluri in the moment that she created history as the first
Indian-American Miss America.
LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

from the majority of those who reacted to
her win. She chose to rise above the other
responses, but she was also prepared.
She recalled advice she had gotten as she
prepared for the pageant, practicing diligently for her talent, a Bollywood dance —
many friends and acquaintances warned
that she would never win unless
she changed her talent to something more easily digestible,
something more American. She
refused. Joking about how
learning a Bollywood routine as
a classically-trained Bharata
Natyam dancer is like asking a
ballerina to bust out some hip
hop moves, Davuluri explained
that she was resolute in sticking
to a talent that reflected her ori- 4M71
gins and her identity.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M71

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M70
Nina Davuluri
There was no doubt in her mind that she
was going to show the judges and the audience this part of herself. And it was clearly
the right choice.
In fact, her platform in running for the
title revolved around her Indian-American
heritage: Celebrating Diversity through
Cultural Competency.
“This wasn’t something that I just woke
up as Miss America and said, ‘Okay, I’m
going to promote diversity now!’” Davuluri
said. “It’s something that I had been working with my own organization on for six
years, and essentially promoting that idea
of cultural competency and battling stereotypes my entire life, from the time that I
was very young, growing up second generation Asian American.”
Since winning, she has been carrying this
message and promoting it all over the US,
logging over 250,000 miles over the past
year-and-a-half. Davuluri has spoken mostly at colleges and universities, talking to
students and other young people about the
importance of inclusion and working
through ignorance and lack of understanding about cultural differences. This has
been the highlight of her travels.
Simultaneously she has been promoting a
second platform, and that is the importance
of STEM (Science Technology Engineering
and Math) education, in particular among
girls. As the first Miss America to have a
background in a STEM-related field — she
graduated from University of Michigan —
Davuluri is passionate about encouraging
other young women to pursue a path that is
often closed to them simply through silence
and lack of opportunities offered to them.
She has a partnership with the Department
of Education and the Department of
Energy, through which she works alongside
technology companies and middle schools
and high schools to position girls well for a
future in STEM fields.
This, on top of her work with the
Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and a
number of other non-profits based both in
the United States and India such as Girl
Rising, has kept Davuluri busy. That’s not
to say that it stopped her from a PR tour in
India and playing host at Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s Madison Square
Garden reception this past September,
immediately after she completed her official
Miss America Duties.
She doesn’t stop. And she won’t. Her win
has opened doors she could never have
imagined. She has already broadened her
horizons from just a year ago. Her plans are
shifting and taking shape as we speak. She
shares what brought her to where she is
and where she’s going next.
What has the last year-and-a-half been
like?

Nina Davuluri ran for Miss America on the platform of Celebrating Diversity
Through Cultural Competency. From choosing Bollywood dancing as her talent at
the pageant to logging over 250,000 miles over the past year-and-a-half promoting
that message, she has lived her convictions.
LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

It’s been surreal. It’s hard to condense a
year and a half into a short interview but I
can touch on a couple of highlights from
the time I won to what I’m doing now.
Obviously the night I won, I should say
your life changes in a matter of two minutes
when your name is announced. For me,
even though it felt like my life changed
overnight, this was something I had been
working for essentially for about six years
now. It had been a goal of mine for quite
some time.

That being said, right after winning,
you’re immediately whisked off to a press
conference, you have about 20 minutes
with your family and friends, and then
you’re basically asked to pack all of your
belongings into two suitcases, and you hit
the road. So, over the past year, during my
year of service, which is what we call it — I
will always say that everyone wants to win
Miss America, but not everyone wants the
job of Miss America. They’re actually two
very separate things.

Basically once you win, you’re traveling
from one city to the next; I was usually in
one place no longer than 48 hours at a
time, and I still am I would say. I’m going
from one place right to the next, living out
of hotels, suitcases, airplanes. It gets quite
exhausting.
There are so many times when I’m like,
‘Wait, what’s my room number? What city
am I in?’ But it’s very interesting because
every day is so different: I do so many different events and appearances that I never
would have been exposed to otherwise.
But there’s kind of a main focus that I’ve
really had during my year.
The first, of course, was my platform, and
that’s ‘Celebrating Diversity Through
Cultural Competency.’ Like I said, this wasn’t something that I just woke up as Miss
America and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to promote diversity now!’ It’s something that I
had been working with my own organization on for six years — essentially promoting that idea of cultural competency and
battling stereotypes my entire life, from the
time that I was very young, growing up second generation Asian American.
So that was my primary message.
I’ve been on this incredible tour and
logged over 250,000 miles over the past
year-and-a-half promoting that message,
mostly at colleges and universities, which is
my favorite thing to do — usually to South
Asian groups, multicultural offices, diversity
and inclusion efforts that will bring me in
to be their keynote, especially now with
May being Asian American and Pacific
Islander Heritage Month and March is
Women’s History Month. So there’s a significant college arena I’ve been able to speak
in and share my story with.
Aside from that, I also promote Children’s
Miracle Network Hospitals. That’s something that every Miss America does, and it’s
something that I worked very closely with
prior to stepping into the role and something that I continue to do now.
My second platform, I would say, is probably STEM education. I myself have a
STEM degree and was the first Miss
America to have a degree in a STEM-related field since we started taking on this platform of STEM, so I have a partnership with
the Department of Education and the
Department of Energy, working alongside
tech companies and middle schools and
high schools to really position girls to go
into STEM.
So those are kind of the main
things that I’ve been working
with. As I transitioned to
becoming a former Miss
America, I like to put it as, you
get your life back, and I get to
be Nina Davuluri again, which
is also very exciting.
Right after I finished my
duties in September, of course,
I hosted the reception at
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Madison Square Garden for

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Nina Davuluri
Prime Minister Modi, which was an incredible
honor. I also traveled to India and did a PR
media tour there in December and January, and
then came back and continued my travels and
promoting my platform.
I also partnered with quite a few NGOs and
non-profits based in the US and India... I’m
really exploring this uncharted territory in the
niche that I have between the US market and
the India market.
That’s just some of it, and it’s kept me very
busy, but I love doing it and I’m very excited to
see where it will take me.
You mentioned being able to go back to being
just Nina — what are the differences there
between Nina who is Miss America and Nina
who is just Nina?
Being Miss America was wonderful. It’s an
incredible year of so many opportunities —
obviously it changes your life in so many ways
that I can’t even articulate. But I think what I’m
most proud of is that it’s given me a voice. It’s
given me a voice beyond my year, beyond my time as
Miss America...
I think what’s most important is that I encourage
every young woman who is competing in this organization to think beyond this title because it lasts for
one year. I’ve seen some of my predecessors who
unfortunately haven’t gotten past that, and I’ve seen
ones who have gone on to do incredibly successful
things. I also see young women who never reach the
title of Miss America go on to do incredible things
with the organization as well.
So for me, although my year was great, I think the
year after is so much better, because you really get to
capitalize on the network you created during that
entire first year. You really get to focus more on the
work that you want to do personally.
Of course, with any organization, as a spokesperson, you’re basically the face for the organization and
you have certain obligations that you have to fulfill.
Now I have the chance to work on what I myself as
Nina would like to do. Although the title of Miss
America will always be there and will always follow
me and I’m grateful for that, I’m looking forward to
sharing a different side of me that perhaps I wasn’t
necessarily able to do before.
We look forward to seeing that! I’d love to rewind a
little and talk about how you got started in pageants.
Where did this desire come from, and when?
I started competing in the (Miss America) teen program.
I started when I was 16, and that was the first time I even
entered the pageant world. One of my friends had said,
‘Hey I’m doing this, and I think you should do it too.’
I was always involved in my community, and I had a talent and I loved performing, I grew up a dancer, so for me
that was always the easy part. I felt like I communicated
well, at least in my mind. So I entered the teen program,
and through that I earned $25,000 in scholarship money. I
was Miss Michigan Teen and first runner up at Miss
America teen, which is the toughest spot, because you’re so
close yet so far.
After that, I took about a five-year hiatus from the Miss
America organization and I went to college. I knew that
(the Miss America competition) was something that I
always wanted to do, but I think when you enter college

Nina Davuluri at the White House with the
Obamas, above, and co-hosting the reception
for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at
Madison Square Garden, left. She is exploring
this uncharted territory in the niche that she has
between the US market and the India market.
FACEBOOK.COM/NINADAVULURI and PARESH GANDHI

you kind of realize that you really have to prioritize where
you want to go with your career and balance your time well.
I didn’t necessarily see at the time how the Miss America
organization would be a fit with everything else I was doing
and everything else that I had on my plate.
After I graduated, it was kind of one those things where I
said, ‘You know what? I’m going to always wonder, what if?’
It was something I had always been interested in, and I
really genuinely thought that I could never be Miss
America because of my background and my ethnicity — I
felt like that was certainly a barrier.
Part of the reason I began competing was, of course, the
scholarship money. I knew that I wanted to go to graduate
school, and my parents were generous enough to pay for a
portion of my education, but I knew that I had to fund a
significant other portion of that. So yes, the scholarship

aspect was definitely a part of it, but I think I also
knew that, should I be able to win this title or have
this job, it would forever change who Miss America
was and the face of this organization.
We’ve reached out to a whole new demographic of
women, and I would say really that that was the
impetus behind entering... I really wanted to change
who ‘the girl next door’ was.
What was your early life and upbringing like, in
terms of how your background and your culture
impacted your feelings on beauty, inclusion,
American-ness and being able to fit into something
like the Miss America tradition?
I guess I’ll start with my childhood. I think I
always knew that I was different from my peers;
young children know when they are. It’s something
that we inherently understand.
For me, I grew up in a very small town in
Oklahoma — small, predominantly white, conservative
town. Well, I was born in Syracuse, New York. My grandparents raised me in India for two years; my first spoken
language was Telugu. Then I came back to
Syracuse, and then my family moved to
Oklahoma when I was four.
So most of my memories are starting at that
time and elementary school, and people asking
me questions like if I was going to have an
arranged marriage or what the red dot meant,
do you worship cows, and the list goes on and
on and on. Many of these remarks aren’t
meant to be malicious, but really are just due
to ignorance. So I think I found myself con4M74
stantly correcting those stereotypes and trying
to address them. But there were also times

From left, Nina Davuluri as Miss Michigan, Miss Syracuse, and Miss New York — the
long road to becoming Miss America.
INSTAGRAM.COM/REALNINAD AND CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

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Nina Davuluri
when I just felt really embarrassed about my culture, especially in middle school.
My family moved to Michigan when I was 10. I think
middle school is the worst time for everyone, because you’re
just trying to fit in, be accepted, find your place, and just
going through so many changes about who you are. For me,
I would always just be embarrassed to bring people to my
house. It would be difficult for me to talk to them about my
religion and why I didn’t go to church on Sundays.
Finally I just realized through that process that if you’re
not able to talk about those things, then people won’t ever
understand what your background is, and you can’t expect
them to know about every single ethnicity and culture and
religion if you’re not willing to educate.
That’s kind of the basis for where this ‘Cultural
Competency’ theme started — it’s not about agreeing with
everyone’s beliefs because that’s not realistic or even ideal;
it’s really about finding an understanding and being able to
communicate in an open, honest, respectful manner.
That’s primarily the message that I try to send, in terms
of my upbringing as well, because yes, you’re going to find
yourself in situations where you have to address those
stereotypes, and I think that’s one of the most important
things we can do.
What was your home life like? Did you parents instill a
strong sense of ‘Indian-ness’ in your home?
Yes! I grew up in a very Indian household, and I can
honestly say I loved it. I’m so thankful for my parents
instilling that cultural value because I can’t imagine not
dancing. I grew up a classically trained Bharata Natyam
dancer, and every summer, my mom, my sister and I
would always travel back to India and have a dance
teacher come to our place so we could learn.
My mom’s family still lives there actually; my grandmother and aunt are still there, and I just saw them this past
Christmas.
I remember that I would wake up screaming, ‘I don’t
want to dance today!’ And my mom would say, ‘Well we

already paid the dance master so you have to go.’
I listened to my mom and I went to dance class and I’m
so appreciative of that because it ended up being a way for
me to express myself that I could never have even imagined. Especially, like I said, going back to middle school
and high school. I think one of my proudest moments that
I’ve ever had is from then, and it’s one I share with young
people a lot. Every year my school had a talent show, and I
think everyone knew me as: Nina, the little Indian girl who
performed the little Indian dance (laughing). But it was a
way for me to break through stereotypes and connect with
my peers because the response I got was so positive.
People would ask, ‘What does this costume mean?’
‘What does this gesture mean?’
‘What does this song mean?’
It was something they had never seen before; I was one
out of five Indians in my class, and that included my sister.
And I remember that the year after, a group of girls did a
traditional Chinese cultural dance. I think that really set
the tone for people to say, ‘You know, I want to share part of
my culture too.’
I’m very appreciative because I grew up with that value of
learning how to be proud of where I come from. I think
that takes time and sometimes you have to learn that from
others as well.
Were your parents supportive when you first got involved
in pageants?
My parents were always supportive, but not necessarily
encouraging. I think that’s the best way I can put it. They
never said no, and of course they also helped me financially with certain things. But I think there was always that
question, that lingering layer, of ‘What happens if you
don’t win?’ or ‘What is everyone else going to think?’
I think we see that quite a bit in our culture — where
people are constantly comparing or thinking about what
people will think, or what the aunties and uncles will say.
Or at least that happened in my family.
I remember competing for Miss New York, and my family
didn’t tell anyone. I was second runner up my first year, and
I remember thinking, ‘Great! I did well!’ This also goes
back to my story of competing — I was second runner up

and I was watching Miss America, that year’s pageant, and
as I watched Mallory Hagan, who was Miss New York that
year, go on to win the title of Miss America representing the
state of New York, I remember calling my mom hysterically.
I said, ‘Mom, I will never win Miss America now. What are
the chances that Miss New York will win two years in a
row?’ It just didn’t seem very likely.
I remember my mom said to me, ‘Nina, why don’t you
first focus on winning Miss New York and then we can talk
about Miss America.’ To hear that from her, to me, was very
encouraging. I felt like that was the best thing she could
have said at that time.
My immediate family are the people who know me the
best; they’ve been with me growing up and they understand
my mentality. But I’m one of 17 cousins... and I’m also very
close with my cousins. Only one of them came to support
me during Miss America in Atlantic City. I think that
speaks more volumes than family saying, ‘Oh you’re doing
this and that’s great.’
Of course, they all jumped on the bandwagon
after I won, and I still love them and have a
great relationship with them, but there was
still kind of that feeling of, ‘Well where was all
of that support before?’ I still questioned that.
What were some other reactions you got to
competing?
I remember talking to my sister, who’s my
best friend. She actually just graduated from
medical school this weekend (in May). We’re
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very close in age, she’s 18th months older, and
we’ll be living together in New York, which I’m

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very excited about. She’s doing her residency there for urology, so this will be an exciting new chapter for both of us.
She’s always been my go-to person, from
ever since I can remember; I’ve always
sought her advice.
She said to me, ‘Why are you spending to
much time on this? What are you really
getting out of this?’ about Miss America —
because it’s a really shot in the dark, it really is. I mean, one in 14,000 women compete for the title every year. And honestly,
being Miss America when you’re in a group
of 53 of the nation’s most talented, intelligent, driven young women… every single
one of us could have done the job; it’s just a
matter of how the cards fall that night. You
never know.
That being said, I remember talking to
her and I said, ‘I sincerely believe that two
to three years from now, Miss America
will be someone who is ethnic.’ To me that
wasn’t pulling the race card or saying,
‘Pick me, I’m brown!’ It was the fact that it
felt so timely for this organization to finally reach out to a new demographic of
young women and ultimately speak to that
young girl who I know is watching like I
was when I was six or seven years old, and
for her to be able to say, ‘This year Miss
America looks like me,’ or ‘This is a talent
that I know how to do.’
That’s really what connects with people.
Overall with competing, I didn’t receive
any negative comments from contestants
behind the scenes or anything like that. I
never experienced that.
The only time I did was when I won Miss
New York — the year I won, I got some
similar comments to when I won Miss
America. People called me a terrorist and
ridiculous things like that. When that happened, I sat down with my mom and sister
and saying, ‘Why is this happening? I was
born in New York, and I’ve always thought
of myself as first and foremost American,
and my platform is diversity.’
I think hindsight is 20/20 because if that
hadn’t happened when I won Miss New
York, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it
the way I did when I won Miss America
because I was very prepared for it.
Also, I’ve said this countless times but it’s
so true, for every negative response, I
received hundreds if not thousands of
words of encouragement. It came from
younger generations really stepping up and
speaking about this.
The fact that I’ve been able to speak at 45
different colleges and universities over the
past year and half is because there’s someone at those institutions suggesting that I
come in and speak about this. I think this
message really resonates with so many of us
— not just Indian Americans, but people of
different cultures trying to find this balance

Nina Davuluri, as Miss America, at a Charity Ride in New York City. A poignant angle of Nina Davuluri’s victory has been
her skin tone, which in the Indian community here or back in India is not considered beautiful.‘At every single college and
university I’ve spoken at, this topic always comes up with South Asian women,’ Nina says.
Donald Bowers/Getty Images for Flywheel Sports

of assimilation and being true to their
roots, of being upholding the values of their
respective backgrounds but also being
American.
It’s so great that you have been able to be
positive about those hurtful comments. Still,
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what some
of those reactions reveal. What did those
reflect about us as a society and beauty
ideals?
I experienced a lot of very xenophobic
comments. I think the point I really want
to drive home, especially within this pageant world of beauty standards, is that we
can redefine what an American is. I think
everyone has an idea in their minds and the
most important thing is being able to
understand the beauty of our country and
why hundreds of thousands of pioneers
immigrate here every year is because of that
American dream.
Where has that gone? Why are people not
understanding that this is a historical
moment in a positive way? With that, I’d
say that regardless of your race, your gender, your socioeconomic status, you can
become anything you want to be so long as
you work hard at it. That’s the ideal our
country was founded on.

Of course I read my Twitter feed, and it is
difficult. But I really have to say that the
fact that so many people really championed
me and there were blogs and stories and
interviews I was able to do that I hope really reached out to people who might not
have thought about this a certain way.
When you won, there was the media
response around xenophobia and
American-ness as we’ve discussed, but there
was also another conversation happening in
the media, mostly in South Asian circles,
around colorism. What were your feelings
on this? Did the value of fair skin impact
your life or your experiences?
I love this question. Thank you for asking
me about this. It’s such a poignant topic for
me because it also resonates with so many
of my peers.
When I went the University of Michigan,
I was very involved in the Indian community there, and that was really the first time I
was immersed into ‘Brown Town’ because,
like I said, I didn’t have a lot of Indian
friends in high school. At every single college and university I’ve spoken at, this topic
always comes up with South Asian women.
Growing up here, I remember as a young
child, my family saying, ‘Don’t go out in the

sun; you’re going to get too dark!’ Then I
would go to school, and I would hear my
teachers or classmates say, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re so tan’ and ‘You have such a
beautiful skin tone!’
Here, in America, we have this billiondollar industry that is tanning salons and
products, and abroad in many Asian countries, we have our own billion-dollar industry of fairness creams and bleaching products and all of that stuff. I think it’s this
idea of wanting what you don’t have.
I think when I learned about what you
mentioned, all the blog posts and commentary highlighting this aspect of, ‘She never
would have won Miss India if she were
competing there,’ my reaction
to that is, ‘Well, I never wanted
to be Miss India.’
So many people are saying
that it’s Americans who are
breaking this beauty standard of what Indians think is
ideal, and for young Indian
girls to see someone who is
so-called ‘successful’ in
America and see that she is a
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darker-skinned and has a
darker complexion is huge.

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Of course when I was growing up, I
heard people in India say, ‘You would be so
much more beautiful if you were fairer.’
But I’ve been able to take on this role and
say, ‘You know what? I’m proud.’
I’m proud to send this message to
embrace your identity and be beautiful in
who you are. I know it’s trite to say that
beauty comes from the inside but it’s about
that confidence, and it starts with one person saying it’s okay to be you.
This is a conversation that I hope I will
get to take further. It’s something that I
love addressing. Especially within our age
group, I feel it’s a very real issue.
Who was that person for you who told
you it’s okay to be you?
I really think it had to have been my dad.
Every single time, even to this day, from
the time we were young, he would always
say, ‘Be yourself.’ It’s something that both
my sister and I constantly heard over and
over. I think the confidence we have no
stems inherently from that.
That’s so important to have learned. With that, what
advice do you have for young South Asian women in the
US today, generally and not just related to beauty or even
culture and ethnicity,
I would say be yourself. I know that’s so clichéd, and
it’s so much easier said than done. But you really have to
know who you are, love who you are, and stand up for
who you are. I think that comes with maturity. I think it
comes with age. But I also think that comes with the
people you surround yourself with.
I think it’s important to take the initiative and go out
and meet people who are positive and figure out your
path and find your passion. I think once you find what
you’re good and what you love, you are going to be successful because you’re happy doing what you want to do.
Yes, we have so many pressures from our families and
culturally, which I completely understand, but ultimately you have to do what’s best for you and only you yourself can really find that.
And it brings me to my last question — I’ve heard that
you wanted to be a doctor but no longer feel that’s for
you, and that you had felt a little pressured to take that
route. Can you talk about that? What lies ahead instead?
I did feel some pressure to go into the medical field. I
think a lot of us do. I did in my family because I come
from a family of physicians — my dad is a physician, my
uncle, my aunt, my cousins, my sister — and so for me, I
think it was the only thing I grew up around. It was the
only thing I really knew. Because of that, from the time I
was young, it was always, ‘Well I’ll be a doctor!’ since
that’s what I was exposed to.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy math and science
because I did and it was something I was good at even
though I also worked hard. But when I went to college,
which I think of as a time of self-discovery, I just sort of
followed this blind path without putting in the effort that
I should have (to figure out what I wanted). So although
yes I felt pressure, a certain part of that falls on me, where
I should have also been looking into myself and asking,
‘Am I really happy with this? Or is this just what I’m supposed to do?’
Now, after graduating and being exposed to so many

Being Nina Davuluri: After her reign ended
Nina has continued to remain on the path of
being an advocate and speaker.
Seen here with Girl Rising ambassadors
Priyanka Chopra, left and Freida Pinto,
second from right.
Left, Nina is an icon for the next generation of
Indian-American girls. Left, two of her nieces
pose beside the Beyond Bollywood exhibit
on her at the Smithsonian.
FACEBOOK.COM/NINADAVULURIMNY

more things over the past year and a half, what I’m choosing to do is take the business route — especially because
there’s such a political component to Miss America that
people don’t realize. You’re lobbying for your platform;
you’re working on legislation, and the issues I was working
on are diversity, cultural competency, and STEM education,
and I was really able to raise awareness.
I would say that the biggest game-changer I had was
more of this thing of filling a niche between Indians abroad
here and Indians in India through things like the Modi

event. That’s when I really shifted focus. I knew I
wanted to do my MBA and pursue a dual degree in
public policy/international relations. I definitely
see myself in the political arena.
I think one of the most interesting stereotypes
I’ve had to battle this whole year is, especially
when going to India, people say, ‘So when are you
going to be in a Bollywood movie?’ As much as I
love Bollywood and respect it, it’s not something
that I want to do. I’ve said that time and time
again and people always give me this look of, ‘Well,
what are you going to do?’
I feel like when you’re given this (Miss America)
opportunity — and for me, coming from a family
that’s been very focused on education and having
developed the network that I have — it’s more
important for me to be an advocate and speaker,
which I’ve been doing.
I’m continuing on that path and I love doing it.
I’m excited to see the political track that I’ll be on
once I get into school and after.
That’s wonderful. We look forward to seeing that as well.
Thanks. So that’s the future, and I’m continuing to travel
through this next year as well. We have quite a few appearances throughout this year, and I’m very lucky and happy
that that worked out how it did because when you’re a
speaker and advocate, you never know.
I’ll be applying for my dual degree for the fall of 2016; I’m
looking to go back to school then. I’m excited to see where
all of this will go. n

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Be it in the promotion of STEM, left, or red carpet
appearances, above, the Miss America organization
considers Nina Davuluri one of ita most successful
winners.
Below, Nina Davuluri speaks at the Thurgood Marshall
College Fund 25th Awards Gala.
FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/DEPARTMENTOFED and LARRY FRENCH/GETTY IMAGES

‘There couldn’t have been a more
perfect representative for us’
Sam Haskell
Executive Chairman and CEO,
Miss America

F

irst and foremost, (Nina’s year of service) was the most incredible year that I
can imagine — she was hardworking,
innovative in her thought processes, did
an incredible job for us promoting our STEM
initiative — Science, Technology, Engineering
and Math. Because of her own background and
because she is so well-spoken, we put together
one of our most successful college tours that
we’ve ever had in working with the Department
of Education and Secretary Arne Duncan, and
in putting the importance of STEM out there,
especially STEM for young women.
Nina could not have been a more perfect representative for us in that; plus she’s so beautiful
and elegant that on the red carpet events that
we book her for, she gets lots of attention. She’s
also probably one of the sweetest people I know.
I really believe that the fact that Nina came
from a background of diversity enhanced her
year as Miss America. I think it brought great interest to
our brand to have the first Indian-American Miss America,
because she was so beautiful and so well-spoken, so intelligent, not only does she represent those of her heritage, but
she set a new example for lots of other diverse people in the
country to look at her as a role model.

However, I think the judges have to look at everything.
It’s not just about what her platform was (‘Celebrating
Diversity through Cultural Competency’); it’s not just
about her being beautiful.
What I’ve always felt about the woman who wins Miss
America is she’s not the best at anything necessarily, but as

long as she is second or third best in everything, that’s who
ends up with the most points and ends up getting the
crown. And as I’m sure Nina would tell you, she came out
of a very competitive class of contestants, and there were
lots of interesting young women in her year.
So for her to emerge as the victor in that very competitive group was really quite amazing. I think it had to do
with the fact that she had a beautiful face and figure, she
was very smart, she had a great platform, she had a great
talent, and she was consistent in every phase
of the competition. So it wasn’t just because of
her platform; it was because of all the other
areas of competition as well.
Nina has also had one of the most successful
post-year experiences of any of our Miss
Americas lately because she has worked so hard
and had made such great contacts and relationships during her year that a lot of the people
who worked with her then wanted to continue
working with her.
She is continuing to speak at the college
level: She spoke at Harvard this year, which
was amazing, and we’re just so incredibly
proud of her.
Moving forward, we have put Nina on our
foundation board. The Miss America
Foundation Board administers our scholarships
and comes forward with fundraising ideas and
how we can further embrace pushing our brand
out there in the education community.
One of the things that is going to tie us
together in the future is having her on the
board. She is the first Miss America to join the
board because I thought who better to represent
us in those initiatives. So I brought it before the
board and she was selected unanimously. I’m thrilled to be
working with her in that capacity. n
Sam Haskell has been involved in running the Miss
America Organization for the past decade.
He spoke to Chaya Babu.

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

Nina Davuluri with her mother. From hair to cards,
Sheela Davuluri is always a big help to her daughter.
INSTAGRAM/REALNINAD

‘She’s very balanced
and down to earth’
Sheela Davuluri
Mother

W

e were overwhelmed when Nina won. We were
sitting there and it just happened and we were
really happy for her.
Initially after her win, there was a lot of press and a lot of
phone calls and it was a little overwhelming. There was a
time when we actually didn’t answer phone calls because
sometimes it’s probably the best thing to do, but afterwards
it settled down.
It’s been a very busy year for Nina and after that too it’s
been busy. It kind of made things busy for the family as well
because there were so many events that we wanted to
attend. We traveled a lot because of those and it just opened
so many doors for Nina.
We’re very happy for her, we’re trying to keep up with
everything, trying to enjoy the whole experience and hoping
that things will continue to be good.
She was 16 when she first did a pageant. My older daughter Meena was in a pageant when we lived in a small town
called St Joseph in Michigan. There used to be a pageant
for all the small towns. It was like a mini Miss America.
Each small town would have their queen and then all these
small towns would have a big pageant and they would
select another queen.
Meena was Miss St Joseph when Nina was, I think, in
10th grade and my older daughter was a senior in high
school. I think that’s probably why she had the idea
because being a younger sibling she always tried to follow
her older sister.
She wanted to do pageants because of that and ended up
doing the local Miss America Teen pageant. And after that
she did state and then she went to the nationals as a teen.

The interest, I think, started because her sister and that’s
what made her go into it. At the time she wasn’t old enough
to do the small town pageant, so she went for this Miss
America Teen pageant.
When she wanted to go into it, of course she asked us and
we didn’t want to say no because it was a fun thing for her
sister and she was just wanting to do the same thing. But
she was younger than her sister but we didn’t see anything
for us to stop her. We were fine with it.
We weren’t expecting it but were glad to see her win.
Then she went to state, which was a little bit stressful at the
time because she was still in high school and there were a
lot of things she had to do as a teen for the state pageant
and the national as well.
It was a lot to juggle with school and other activities. It
was very hard for her and for me, you know, just trying to
coordinate everything. But overall, I think it worked out
and we were extremely proud of how she did. She ended up
being the first runner up to Miss America Teen. I guess, it
all worked out the way it’s supposed to. We’re happy and I
think that experience definitely helped her in the Miss
America process.
Nina is very driven. If she wants something, she can go
after it and tries her best to make it happen. I don’t know if
I’m biased if I say that (laughs), but I think she’s very balanced and down to earth.
She knows what’s expected of her from the family and
even when she was Miss America, she knew what the Miss
America organization expected of her. She tries to stand
by the rules and do the right thing. The thing that people
wouldn’t know, what I would, is that she’s very driven,
she’s very committed to doing what she needs to do and
works hard.
I think some of it is definitely family because parents are

always telling children how to do the right thing, to aim
high, to work hard, all parents do that. She also gets a lot of
it from her sister, who is a huge influence. She looks up to
her and thankfully her sister is in the right direction. So
that has always helped.
After her first pageant when she was only 16, she
became Miss Michigan Outstanding Teen, and first runner up to Miss America’s Outstanding Teen and from then
on the Miss America organization has become a part of
her journey.
After she was done with college, she went back — and
obviously won a lot of scholarships through the pageant —
so they helped her a lot in college, they paid for it. She
thought that was another good thing about this organization. It was not just a beauty pageant, she wanted to be in it
for more than that because they would obviously support
her education as well. She got into the process again and
went into the Miss New York competition and you know
the rest.
The most challenging part was probably when she was
only 16 and had a lot to handle as a teen because Miss Teen
is a mini Miss America program. You’re supposed to do
your talent, you’re supposed to speak in public, you’re supposed to do everything that a Miss America does but you’re
not that old yet.
So understanding all that, balancing school-related activities and being successful as a teen was, I think, her first
challenge. The next challenge was to become a state rep
because the first time she tried being Miss New York, she
didn’t make it. And once, I think, in Michigan, there was a
point where she actually had to work out and get her
weight down in order to be fit for the competition. That was another challenge that she overcame, worked for it and finally made it as Miss
New York.
Other than any normal challenge that anyone would face when you participate in this
kind of a competition, you have to be able to
meet the challenge of public speaking, being
good at your grades, your college and handling
your personal platform. You have to work and
develop your platform, speak about it and be
4M82
able to spread the word about your platform.
That’s another challenge and she was able to

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M81

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Meena Davuluri
Sister

I

‘She’s been doing amazing
things as just Nina Davuluri’

think my family was always really supportive of it
(Nina participating in pageants) even when she did
it in high school. It was actually something that
brought our family closer because it was always
something that we did together.
If there was an event that she had, then we would
all go together.
And growing up we watched Miss America on TV
every year. My mom, my sister and I would always
watch it. It was cool that she got into Miss America
then.
I would say the thing that’s been different with her
doing it at the Miss America level, as an adult, was
that in the beginning they (parents) didn’t really
understand it. It was kind of like ‘Why are you doing
that? What’s the point when you can go on and go to
school and get your job started?’
I think that was what they didn’t understand, and
the opportunities that would be available through it
weren’t fully understood. I can probably say that even
I didn’t fully understand it.
We’ve always been supportive — it was just that you
never think that it can change your career literally.
I think Nina is a very fortunate person in that she
was a Miss America that had a very different background. She had a different market, and I think she
knew what she wanted out of the year as soon as she
won. She thought about it long term, and looked at
different career options that came about.
Seeing the stuff that she’s been able to do, in terms
of the groups in DC that she works with, or a lot that
she does with STEM education was something very
The Davuluri sisters: Nina, left and Meena, right. Inset, a little
different for my parents.
Nina, left, with her akka Meena.
To see that there is a way to have a really meaningINSTAGRAM/REALNINAD and NINA DAVULURI
ful and impactful career in something that is not a
knows about it.
standard job, like a doctor or a lawyer or something like
It’s been really exciting and really interesting watching
that was new to them. It’s just a very unique opportunity
her go through this journey. It’s kind of fun because I get to
that she has.
go along for the ride sometimes. I always say that I get the
I think my sister will always say that she doesn’t think
perks without having to do any of the work (laughs).
that they fully understood the magnitude of it until she
So many events that she’s done are very cool. She’s part of
hosted the event when Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Girl Rising, which highlights women’s empowerment and
Modi came to Madison Square Garden and she was one of
education in developing countries... They’re launching a
the emcees.
chapter in India, which is how Nina came on board with
When my parents met Modi, I think that was when she
Frieda Pinto for it. They did a pre-Oscar red carpet event in
was like, “I think they finally think that I have a legit job!”
LA back in February. We got walk the red carpet, meet the
I think they did get it. They just never really had seen her
lady in charge of Girl Rising who is incredibly wonderful. I
in action. Even when she said that she’d met Obama and
got to meet Freida Pinto. Nina got to meet Priyanka
things like that... They’d seen videos, they’d seen pictures,
Chopra; they were in the back having a conversation oneand she’d tell them about things, but this was the first time
on-one. It was just a really fun experience, something I’d
that they actually saw it.
never done before and probably will never do again. That
For them being Indian at the end of the day, I think that
was probably my favorite thing that I got to do with her.
was kind of a culmination of everything she had done.
Whenever she has anything, it’s really fun to go along
I think Indian parents always fear the unknown and they
with her and it’s really great to see her talk. We all went to
just want their kids to do better than they did. I think they
Hawaii after the LA event. I got to see her talk there to a
always get nervous when we stray off a path they’re familiar
high school and its probably the first time I’ve seen her talk
with.
and it wasn’t something that I enjoyed just because it was
Overall, it’s been an exciting experience. It’s just been realmy sister talking, but it was an actually great talk.
ly incredible as an older sister to watch your sister grow so
I had always encouraged her to start looking at something
much, the experiences she’s had over the last year, the advooutside of medicine for as long as I could remember just
cacy work that she’s been able to do.
because I always thought that she was a really great speakSince giving up her title she’s been so, so busy, even
er. Medicine (which Nina was pursuing earlier) is just this
though she doesn’t have the official title of Miss America.
ridiculously long and hard path, something that’s so comShe’s been doing amazing things as just Nina Davuluri and
mon amongst Indian people that people forget that its 4
continues to find new pockets and expands her horizons in
years of medical school, minimum three years of residency,
these various areas that our family was never quite exposed
if you’re doing a fellowship... you lose your 20s to school. I
to because it’s not medicine, and an Indian family never

hated it and I wanted to do it. So I told her to look at
different stuff, but she was like, ‘I think I want to do
medicine.’
After she won, I remember she called me one day
in October — she had just won in September — and
I was on a really messed up sleep schedule because
of my rotation. It was 2.30 in the morning when she
called me. We were just
talking about the past
couple of months she
had had and starting her
reign as Miss America,
and she was like, ‘I don’t
think I want to do medicine.’
She has a platform and
a voice where she has the
ability to make change
and I think that’s something she should
absolutely use. So, I was
really excited about the
change.
I think from then on
we were like, ‘Moving
forward, if you meet someone, make sure you’re
thinking about how you can work with them and what you
want to do.’
Hearing her talk about how she’s met someone interesting
or has gotten involved in organizations like Girl Rising has
been a really neat experience. And now that she has more of
a plan, like wanting to get her MBA, the parents are set
with it.
I attribute a lot of our closeness to my mom... I remember
when I was a kid, like maybe 7 or 8, if one of us would get
mad or jealous at the other one over something, she was
always like, ‘You guys are sisters. You’re the same person in
the sense that anything that the other one achieves or
accomplishes, anything good that happens to them, it’s like
something good is happening to you.’
I remember so clearly when she said that. That really
struck a chord... As we got into middle school and high
school, Nina started opening up to me more about her personal life and things going on at school, and that’s when I
started opening up to her. By the time we finished high
school, we were really, really close.
When she was a freshman and sophomore, I was a junior
and senior. So we did a lot together. We danced together.
We were on the tennis team together. We talked
about everything... She was just basically like a
best friend growing up.
I always tease her because she never shows
any emotion. Ever. She never cries. Every time
we watch a movie, I’m the one that’s bawling,
and she always makes fun of me. Even if it’s The
Lion King, I just start bawling every time
Mufasa dies. She’s like, “What’s wrong with
you?”
But when I left for college, she cried and I
4M82
was like, “Oh! You do have emotions!” (laughs).

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M82

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M80
Sheela Davuluri

The Davuluri girls with their grandparents.
COURTESY: NINA DAVULURI

3M81

Meena Davuluri
She’s not unemotional, but I’m probably
over emotional about ridiculous things that
don’t need to have emotions involved. I
think she’s just much stronger with her
emotions than I am, which will be funny for
me as a physician working with cancer.
We’ll see what happens there. I think that’s
a great strength for my sister to have for her
career; it helps her be a stronger speaker.
We are very different. We’re always like,
‘Do you think we would be friends if we
weren’t sisters?’ (laughs)
We have honestly probably only been
apart for four years of our life. She ended up
coming to Michigan with me. We were both
in the Indian American Student Association
together. It was nice because both of our cirNina with her father.
cles of friends actually knew each other. In
the Greek scene we kind of knew the same
INSTAGRAM/REALNINAD
people, and then in the Indian scene we
because suddenly none of the career stuff matknew the same people.
tered any more. We got this relationship back of
It just made it even easier to stay close and
just being purely best friends, sisters.
when I went to medical school and did my
So it’s (winning Miss America) been really,
MPH and she was still in college, we talked and
really wonderful, even for our relationship. To
every now and then I would go back and visit.
have that and living together (the sisters are
We’ve had our rough patches, like in any
planning to live together in New York) is just
friendship, like when she was trying to figure
so exciting. I’m looking forward to it because
out what she wanted to do before she won Miss
we are very, very close, and I can come home
America. I think I definitely took more of a
and not do my dishes and she can’t yell at me
parental role than I enjoyed because as a big sis(laughs).
ter, you’re like, ‘Make sure you’re getting an
I think Nina has reached an area where I can’t
internship’ or ‘Look at what jobs you want to do’
even advise her on moving forward. She’s been a
or ‘If you want to go to medical school, you need
trailblazer... I’m excited to see how her thoughts
to start studying for the MCAT.’
change and how she ends up moving forward
Getting into medical school was a really big
with everything that she’s cultivated. n
struggle for me... I just didn’t want that to happen to her because it sucked so much for me.
Meena Davuluri is a Resident at the MontefiThis sucks when you don’t want to talk about
ore Medical Center, University Hospital for Albert
your career but someone’s forcing you to talk
Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City.
about it. But we stayed close.
She spoke to Chaya Babu.
And then after she won it was awesome

do that as well.
Other than that, she did have the
support of the family. Although there
were times when we felt that maybe
now she should continue her studies
and take the one year break. But
when she won we knew obviously
that her decision was better than
ours.
When she was little, she took ballet, jazz and tap dance classes. She
loved taking dance classes. When
we went to India in the summer,
that’s when I would have her attend
dance lessons. I think she was 4 at
the time. There were times when
she didn’t want to attend the dance
class but I think overall she always
loved dancing.
When we went to India, she would
have a lesson everyday and when we
came back here, there would be a lesson once a week. She did the ballet,
jazz, tap through high school and
stopped doing it after that, but continued with her Indian dancing even
in college.
That’s how it all came together and
she ended up doing the Indian dance
at the Miss America competition.
I was not sure if Bollywood would
work or how it was going to work or
how we wanted to present it. There
were other people who advised her
that maybe she should go with
something else. She made her
choice and picked the song for her
state competition and choreographed it herself. She won Miss
New York doing that dance.
Then for Miss America, again people weren’t sure if that was going to
be the right thing for the Miss
America stage because it was going
to be on TV, there was going to be a
different way of judging and if the
judges would be familiar enough to
judge. But she just knew that that’s
what she would do and picked out
her song herself. She got trained by
Nakul Dev. She flew to LA and he
taught her and she came back and
practiced on her own.
In the end it was basically her
choice and she knew that would
work. We knew that if that’s what
she wanted then that’s what she
should do.
I was shocked at how well she handled it (the racial backlash on twitter) because I couldn’t handle it as
well as she did. As a parent it’s very
disturbing when people start talking
about your child. But of course when
you pull yourself together, you know
things happen and that people say

things because they don’t know the
whole story.
It’s easy to say something but the
important thing is to move on and
do what you’re supposed to do. I am
very proud of how she handled it.
I’m very impressed, if I may say so
myself, with how she handled it.
We weren’t even expecting it. I
mean, she won, we were happy. Then
all of a sudden this happens. It’s kind
of a little chakra but sometimes you
understand that people don’t know
things and make these statements or
comments. When you’re in the public
eye these things happen and they
never end.
It never happened to us because we
were never in that position, but now
that she was in that position we
started to understand how things can
turn in that direction sometimes.
I think the important thing is that
she stays focused in the right direction and doesn’t let this pull her
back.
I think she has grown a lot (since
the Miss America win). I see her confidence. I see her being very balanced. I see her being calm, poised
and I am just pleasantly surprised at
how much this experience has given
and taught her, and made her a complete person.
It’s the experience she gained in the
last two years, meeting all these people, facing different kinds of situations, speaking in a number of
schools and colleges and being able
to answer a number of questions that
you wouldn’t even expect. These have
taught her a lot about how you balance your emotions, stay poised,
calm and confident.
I’m really, really proud of her
because even as a mom, I didn’t see
all the qualities she possessed till I
actually saw it as an outsider when
she was Miss America. (By) just
watching the news, knowing things
that she was doing as Miss America
and after that, I mean, she just surprised me pleasantly how she’s handled the backlash, how she’s handled
her activities, her family, her job and
her PR.
I’ve just known her as Nina and it’s
lesson to me that there’s more to
Nina... As a parent, you always try to
tell your children what’s right and
what’s wrong, no matter how old
they get. But now I know that she
can make the right decision. I’m very
confident and I don’t hesitate to ask
her for advice if I need anything. n
Sheela Davuluri is a business
intelligence analyst at SUNY Upstate
Medical University in Syracuse.
She spoke to Chaya Babu.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M83

THE POWER
OF ONE
‘I remember one time, a friend and I went around
neighborhoods, on a very, very cold and rainy day.
We decided to sell crafts to raise money. I don’t remember
how many hours we were out, but we came back with $5.
It was so disheartening. But over time I learned to
persevere through.’
Neha Gupta, winner of the International Children’s Peace
Prize and the India Abroad Face of the Future Award, tells
Chaya Babu how she is making her big dreams come true.

INDIA ABROAD
FACE OF THE
FUTURE AWARD
2014
For her inherent humanity;
for her exemplary work with
children; for changing lives.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M84

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

THE POWER
OF ONE

W

hen nine-year-old Neha Gupta dug up
buried old toys from her basement to
hold a garage sale, the proceeds of which
she used to buy books and clothing for
orphaned children in India, winning the
International Children’s Peace Prize was neither on her
agenda nor her imagination.
Giving to kids around the world and making them feel
loved was her only hope. Kids, as she was too at the time,
can be quite simple in that way.
But Neha soon learned that giving is not always simple.
She held onto what seemed like the unlikely passion of a
passing fad, even to her parents, and built upon that afternoon’s suburban sidewalk sale, raising more money and
donating to more kids over the years.
But her classmates thought it weird, and rejection on
neighbors’ doorsteps was hard for a little girl with big
dreams.
Still, a mix of grit, smarts, and a deep well of empathy
propelled her forward — her charitable activity on trips to
her parents’ hometown in India, Yamuna Nagar in
Haryana, evolved into an official non-profit organization,
Empower Orphans. She came up with the ideas for programs to serve the children, a group that expanded from
orphans to underprivileged youth on the whole, and implemented them.
“I saw that it wasn’t only orphans who were in disadvantaged circumstances,” Neha said.
She rallied her peers to get them involved in fundraisers
— she has raised a total of $1.7 million. She brought educational tools and medical resources to children who barely
have a roof over their head. And then, at 18 years old, she
was given the Children’s Peace Prize, the same recognition
awarded to Malala Yousafzai a year before she won the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Since the early days, Neha and Empower Orphans have
served 25,000 youth in both India and the US by giving
them access to libraries, computer labs, and science centers,
as well as setting up eye and dental health camps where
they could see doctors and get medical exams.
More recently, she has brought sewing schools into the
repertoire of programming at EO, an initiative geared
specifically toward young women in India, and one that has
had significant results.
“I realized that girls needed technical skills as well,” Neha
said. “Sometimes they are forced to be dependent on their
families’ incomes or are forced to be in the house and not
allowed to go to school.”
Neha spoke of the sewing centers with exuberance,
explaining that through them, girls can support themselves
and start their own businesses.
Today, as a student at Pennsylvania State University, Neha
is in the process of setting up a campus chapter and then
taking her organization international, with hubs hopefully
around the world soon. Her vision: youth-led chapters serving local youth in need.
At the time Neha received the International Children’s
Peace Prize, she was taking a semester off to recover after a
head injury. During her freshman year, she had fallen on
concrete, resulting in a concussion — her rehabilitation
experience and working with doctors, who specialize in

Neha Gupta’s charitable activity on
trips to her parents’ hometown in India
evolved into her official non-profit
organization Empower Orphans.
COURTESY: EMPOWER ORPHANS

brain injuries and brain injury rehab, have
increased the intensity of her desire to work
in medicine.
Her love for children drives her to pediatrics, but she’s also interested in the brain.
Surprisingly, she’s able to manage her nonprofit, its expansion, her college course load,
a range of extracurriculars, and a social life.
Something about that indicates that she’ll
have no problem becoming a doctor — possibly one in the public eye, like Dr Sanjay
Gupta, who she says she looks up to tremendously.
We’ll keep our eye out for her. But we
probably won’t need to.
You’ve been getting recognized in really big
ways. Congratulations! How does it feel?
It’s something I never expected when I
started my work. When I first began, it was
really focused on just helping
the kids and doing whatever I
could to support them.
Now, getting all this external
support, the support over the
years, has really been so incredible — not for myself, but
because I know that whenever
word is getting out about
Empower Orphans, or about
me, it’s serving to spread the
word about these kids who need 4M86
our help and to help collect

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M85

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M86

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M84
Neha Gupta
funds. I never think about it in terms of
myself when anything is in the news, but
really just about the kids.
The organization has grown to be wellknown today. But how did it begin? How did
you decide at nine years old that you wanted
to do something like this?
From a very young age, civic involvement
and engagement have been a part of my
upbringing. When I was little, I used to
visit my grandparents in India. I was born
in New Zealand and I grew up in the
United States, but my parents and I would
always go back to India because that’s
where they grew up.
I used to love going and seeing my grandparents — they had this tradition that, if it
was someone’s birthday in the family, in
addition to celebrating at home they had to
go to a local orphanage and spend a day
with the kids. They would bring gifts and
read to them, and it was my grandparents
way of teaching their kids and grandkids
that it was important to support others in
the community and to give back.
I used to love doing it because I got to
play with other kids my age, but it was
when I was nine that it all just really struck
me. There was just something about that
trip to see the orphans that caused me to
place myself in their shoes and understand
how different our lives were.
Understanding that these kids didn’t
have anybody to love or be loved by, that
they were completely alone, that they didn’t have the money to get an education or
go to school or receive any kind of medical
care — those were things that I was just
used to in the US, and three of those
things — broke my heart. Because, what if
that was me? How would I support
myself? How would I carry out my life?
What would I do?
From that moment I knew I had to take
action for these kids and I had to find my
voice and raise it — but also that they could
have one too. That’s when the idea behind
Empower Orphans began.
At that time in your early life, what do you
think set you apart from other children who
feel sad about the misfortune in the world?
Young people have a lot of compassion, but
it takes something else to take the extra step.
The biggest things when I was little, and
even now, was that I knew the difference
between sympathy and empathy.
I maybe didn’t know what the word
‘empathy’ really meant back then, when I
was eight-nine years old, but I understood
the concept behind it. It was a trait I just
had and I think most people have. But it’s
really putting that empathy into action.
When I was young and I saw these kids, I
felt awful. I would go every year until I was
nine and see kids begging for food on the

Neha Gupta’s many contributions.
COURTESY: EMPOWER ORPHANS

street and I felt so sad and I felt sympathetic, but it was at the orphanage when I could
really understand it on a deeper level that I
became empathetic.
I began to feel their pain — it wasn’t
only me feeling bad for them as much as it
was kind of a shared bond between us.
Putting that into action is what brought
Empower Orphans here today. I really do
think that everybody has that ability
though to empathize.
Is there a particularly poignant memory
that stands out to you from that time?
I was very young so a lot of it kind of
blurs together into one, but out of everything I remember about India, I specifically
remember the kids I would see — wherever
I went. Driving in the car, at the orphanage,
I always remember the kids who were my
age or younger, living in tattered clothes,
covered in dirt. I remember that image very
specifically because it’s one thing to read
about it but it’s so different to see it.
Do you think your background played into
your desire to do this work?
Everybody in my family has just always
worked hard for their passions and goals,
and I guess I had that ingrained in me
when I was little or I picked that up from
them. I’ve always been someone who is a
go-getter and who wants to set my mind to
something and then achieve it.
When I was little and I said I wanted to
do this and then I came back to the US, I
thought, ‘I’m going to this.’ I got all my toys
from the basement, we had a garage sale,
and I knew that it wasn’t just something
that I was saying I wanted to do and then it
would be done with; it was something I
wanted to carry out and put into action.
That’s a definitely a trait that I picked up
from everybody in my family: working

hard, following your passion, and serving
other people as well. I got that from my
grandparents when they taught their kids
and their grandkids that it’s important to
give to others. That really shaped me as a
person.
My parents aren’t in the service sector per
se, but they have always been such a big
support for Empower Orphans, and they
themselves have always had a passion for
helping others.
On my mom’s side, my great-greatgrandmother was very close to Gandhi. I
gained a lot of inspiration from her. I read
her biography when I was little. It always
moved me how much she stood up for her
rights in India and worked so closely with
Gandhi to ensure that all Indian citizens
had rights as well.
I learned from her that your gender and
age didn’t matter, but you could make a difference if you wanted to — not only for
yourself but for other people.
Outside of family, have you felt like you’ve
been in a social space, either in the Indian
community where you grew up or otherwise, that emphasized civic engagement and
creating change?
Having started this when I was nine, it’s
been a journey to find those specific people. Growing up, people were of course
supportive of Empower Orphans, but I
really wanted to show my peers here how
much kids overseas needed our help. That
was definitely something I focused a lot on
when I was little — just educating people
within my community, specifically within
my age group.
Obviously most nine year olds are preoccupied with playing outside, playing with
their dolls and cars, so that was an area I
was very focused on.

Over the years, I have found so many people who are like-minded and want to
change the world through their passion or
specific focus. That has been mainly
through school, through conferences,
through a lot of different programs where
young people are being honored.
It’s really been an amazing journey. I’ve
found a lot of people who I can work with
in the future and collaborate with on
Empower Orphans.
You mentioned the garage sale. What
were the other founding efforts?
The first thing was the garage sale. As a
kid, I wanted to sell my toys and raise
money so that other kids could have toys. I
knew that money was going to go to education, but I also thought, ‘I have these toys. I
don’t need them. Other kids need them
more. Let me sell them.’
My neighbor and I did a combined garage
sale, and we raised almost $800, which was
a pretty large sum for a garage sale. The
success of that event made me want to keep
going.
I took that money to India the same year,
and we bought books for the kids. They had
a very small library but they expanded it.
We bought sweaters, food, and more. It was
Christmas time, so it was really a moment I
will remember for the rest of my life. As a
ten year old, it meant a lot to see my efforts
make some kind of impact. At that moment
I was hooked.
I went back to the US again, and I started
making my own crafts, and I would go door
to door selling them and setting up stalls at
craft fairs. I would tell people why I was
doing this and try to raise money.
Then we started applying for grants and
fundraising in different ways; I started having the orphans make things and then I’d
sell them in the US as well. It snowballed
from there.
We started getting recognition from
organizations domestically, internationally,
and I started receiving awards, which was
such a humbling experience and such an
honor. Of course, getting actual non-profit
status as 501C-3, which I definitely had
help with, was huge.
As a kid it’s not easy to go through all that
paperwork and understand it all. But I
knew that this was not something that I
just wanted to do as a small thing; I wanted
to make it bigger; I wanted to get other
people involved.
It wasn’t just about helping
other kids. It was about mobilizing other youth and getting
them to help youth around the
world. That’s something I’m
focusing on right now as well:
Setting up chapters across the
country and around the world,
and having them be youth-led.
I think that’s a very powerful
message.
How does being youth-led
4M87
make a difference?

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M87

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Neha Gupta with Malala Yousafzai, who won the
International Children’s Peace Prize before her and
went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
COURTESY: EMPOWER ORPHANS

3M86
Neha Gupta
It makes a difference on both ends. Let’s say there’s an
Indian village, and there are young people there, and youth
from another country come to be with them. Those kids in
the village — I’ve seen how much power that can have to
have other kids your age come from a different country to
help you, to spend time with you.
It is very impactful. It works the other way around as well
— knowing that they were able to have an impact on someone’s life who are their own age but in a different circumstance and different country.
A big part of it is also educating people to look beyond
their boundaries and to notice that while you’re going about
your daily life, there are other kids your age who are wishing to be in your position. Both sides get something out
this.
Who was most helpful to you in those early stages?
My parents certainly were a huge well of support. I would
ask so many questions about, ‘How do I do this?’ and ‘How
do I do that?’ and they would help me understand exactly
what needed to be done, whether it was about gaining our
non-profit legal status or anything to do with taxes.
We would hire lawyers, accountants, we have a board of
adults of various backgrounds who would give advice. I
would ask a lot of adults for advice. I was a kid and I lacked
that experience. So part of it was me just asking around to
learn and networking as a little girl.
In terms of all the different events and fundraising activities, I would ask my friends, ‘Hey do you want to help out
with this?’ and I would always get a different group of
friends every time. They were also a huge support in whatever I needed.
What was that experience like as a child, fundraising and

Neha with her father Vikas after receiving a World of
Children Award.
FACEBOOK.COM/EMPOWERORPHANS

essentially asking people for money?
It was hard. It was actually very difficult. It was not as
easy as I had expected in the beginning.
It’s just something I learned to cope with in the sense that
I’d go around the neighborhood and people would immediately reject me and say, ‘No’ or ‘Not right now.’ It’s a fair
response. But of course as a little girl trying to raise money
for kids, it was hard.
I just learned to push through it. I remember one time, a
friend and I went around neighborhoods, and it was a very,
very cold rainy day, but we decided to go around and sell
crafts to raise money. I don’t remember how many hours
we were out, but we came back with $5. It was so disheartening. But over time I really just learned to persevere
through, and that every amount of money makes a large
difference.
It’s been about a decade since then. What is the biggest
change from then to now?
There are so many different ways that Empower Orphans
has grown. Over the years, the number of media mentions
and awards has definitely increased our visibility. I’m hoping to expand even more by starting these chapters.
I’m starting one at Penn State right now. I’m very excited.
People are applying for the executive board right now,
which will work with the other student chapters in the
country and around the world. Those chapters will focus on
fundraising, project ideation and implementation.
Penn State would be like a home base, and all the people
within the organization would have a role and responsibility. It would be kind of a headquarters.
We’ve expanded so much over the years in terms of how
many projects we work on and how many children we

Neha’s mother Amruta hugs her as she receives the
International Children’s Peace Prize at The Hague.
Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi looks on.
FACEBOOK.COM/EMPOWERORPHANS

impact, but now I’m really hoping to expand in terms of the
number of youth volunteers that we have.
How did you decide what areas to focus on?
I always knew I wanted to work on education and healthcare. To me, those were important because they were two
ways that children in poverty could escape the cycle they
were in. When I was little, I started with that one library,
and I realized the importance of education and literacy
through that aspect of my work.
I want to be a doctor when I grow up, so of course doing
the health camps has been something that I’ve been focusing on over the last few years.
We’ve done many different ones in Mumbai and Pune;
we’ve done general wellness camps; we’ve done surgery for
polio sufferers; we’ve done a lot of things.
Here in the US, we’ve focused on helping underprivileged
schools, we’ve helped kids in hospitals — thought we can’t
support children in hospitals with their medical bills, but
we can support them with other things.
For example, a computer center for kids who
are in-patient and they use computers and
tablets to Skype with friends, catch up on their
school work, talk to their teachers for a while.
They get very lonely and isolated, so this is a
way for them to feel connected to their world.
It proved to be very successful. Patients started responding better to their treatments
because of what we did.
We’ve done a lot with a broad focus as long
as it’s education and healthcare for helping
4M88
kids. We’ve been happy to do any type of project within this.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M88

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M87

Neha Gupta has helped
organize medical camps for the
underprivileged. She hopes to become
a doctor so that she can have a more
hands-on approach to their care later in life.

Neha Gupta
What has been a moving moment for you in
this work?
There are a lot, but I’ll tell you about Meena.
One reason I really liked our sewing center
was because we were able to see results from it
— we saw results from many projects because
we watched kids benefit over the years, but
Meena was a specific example of that.
Her story really showcased how important
technical skills are, or any skill that helps
women be self-sufficient. Meena was about 18
when I met her. She was living with her dad,
mom, and brother in a very small village. They
had shared one room. Her father had just lost
his job, and the family had no other source of
income.
Meena was naturally dependent on the family’s income, or lack thereof, and it was a day to
day cycle of the parents telling the daughter that she couldn’t go to school. Meena, knowing that she could end up in a
horrible position or be married off or find herself in dangerous circumstances, decided to come to our sewing center.
We gave her a sewing machine, and we taught her all the
skills to start her own business. The skills and the tools she
gained transformed her life. She was able to open her own
tailoring business and support her entire family.
She did something for herself and made up for the money
that her dad was unable to provide, she even brought in
enough money to have electricity in the house for the first
time. That helped her brother study for his electrician
exam, and he passed, and started making money as well.
To me, this was just incredible to see how much power
one sewing machine could have and how powerful Meena
could be to change her life and change the lives of others in
her family.
She not only received that help, but she came back to
Empower Orphans and started mentoring other young
women in the sewing center to be able to stand on their
own feet and feed their destinies.
That’s so wonderful. Before you had such telling stories of
impact, what were people’s responses to you devoting so
much of your time to this work?
Everyone in my family has been extremely supportive of
what I’m doing, what the future of Empower Orphans is,
and it’s always heartwarming to see that because someone
who is passionate about something, wants to be supported.
When I was younger and I would tell people I was doing
this, I didn’t always get positive reactions — especially
when I would go to underprivileged schools in India, the
principals would look at me weirdly and say, ‘You want to
do this? Why?’ It’s definitely come a long way.
The response from kids wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I started. Adults were very supportive and understood. But my peers — it was hard for them understand. It’s
hard to grasp poverty unless you see it up close. I felt that
they would get it more if they did see it up close. But it was
definitely very difficult at first because, though my friends
were supportive, most kids my age looked down upon it.
They would kind of make fun of me for it.
I remember once in middle school, a company came to
the school and did a presentation in which they gave money
to Empower Orphans. That just led to the kids making fun
of me. I’m sure you can imagine, in middle school, a girl
who is trying to do this and all of the other kids saying,
‘What in the world is she doing?’
That was definitely tough. I would get embarrassed.

FACEBOOK.COM/EMPOWERORPHANS

Which is wrong. It wasn’t something to get embarrassed
about, but they made me feel like I was doing something
wrong or that I shouldn’t be doing it, that I couldn’t fit in if
I kept doing it.
It really got a lot better in high school though. I started a
club; I wanted to try again and reach out to the students,
and I thought, ‘Maybe there will be a different response this
time.’ And there really was.
It took some time, but kids were so different. They wanted to help. They wanted to do whatever they could. I
remember a fundraising event that hundreds of kids were
involved in, I heard kids talking about how excited they
were for the event. That made me feel so great, to know
they were happy about helping, and now it’s even more
amazing to see kids in college doing much work for
Empower Orphans.
I also love to see kids think of Empower Orphans as
theirs as well, to hear them say ‘we’ instead of ‘Neha.’ That
means a lot.
How did you push through those moments when you were
only 12 or 13?
I don’t know. I don’t remember it that much. There were
definitely times when I was sad about it, but I just had to
deal with it. I don’t think there was ever a time when I
stopped doing Empower Orphans though.
You have come so far in that regard. And it sounds like the
support of your family has been tremendous. Is there anyone else you feel has helped you through influence or inspiration?
I would say Sanjay Gupta. I’m not related to him in anyway (laughing) — people always ask me that. I’m not, but I

wish he was. He’s always been a big inspiration to
me because one, he is in neurology, the brain is
so interesting to me, and I’ve obviously been very
interested in it lately.
But also, two, he’s a public figure who talks
about public health issues and tries to help people around the world.
He covers every different aspect of what I love
to do: Medicine, talking about health issues,
discovering new things and reporting on them.
He’s just incredible to me. I’ve never met him,
but from everything I hear, he sounds like an
incredible person.
And I would definitely say my great-greatgrandmother is a big inspiration to me as well. I never met
her either, but to have the power to stand up and defy the
odds, defy rules about things that shouldn’t be done, but to
do it in a way that’s peaceful, and to follow your heart and
your passion, is so rare. She’s just very important to me in
that way.
Lastly, I would say my dad has been a huge influence in
my life in so many different regards. He’s somebody who
has always supported me, and he’s always my ‘go to’ with
Empower Orphans. If I have a question or concern, he’s
always the one to say something realistic or have another
idea.
After all of this, I of course want to know: How do you do it
all? You’re a young woman in college, living life, trying to be
a doctor, and you’re also running a non-profit. Tell us how
you make that work?
Good question (laughing). It took a while to understand
how to manage my time. The best way I do it, honestly, is
my calendar. I have to plan out my days with allotting specific amounts of time to Empower Orphans, my school
work, my friends, with everything else, and I make sure to
just balance it all.
I know the importance of each of these things, and I have
a lot of motivation to excel at all of these things. I know
that Empower Orphans and school come first, but I do try
to make as much time as I can with my friends because
they are very important to me.
That’s great. What else do you do for yourself?
I do a lot for myself actually in between everything else.
The biggest way I relax is with my friends. They’re like a
family to me: They support me, whether it’s about
Empower Orphans or something else. They’re really special.
I find time to unwind as well. Whenever I can, I watch
Friends, which is my favorite show. I used to play tennis as
well and be into photography, but I haven’t done either of
those in a while. I’d definitely love to take them back up.
What’s next for you?
What I see for myself is that I want to be a doctor and I
know that I want to go into pediatrics because I love kids. I
have not declared my major yet but there’s time. And for
Empower Orphans, I hope to open up chapters globally
after opening this current one at Penn State, I really just
hope to expand it into a self-sufficient organization.
I would still maintain it and be the director, but as a doctor, I want to take it along the same track as Doctors
Without Borders, where we have doctors practicing in the
US and traveling to developing world countries to do exactly what Doctors Without Borders does. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M89

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Vikas Gupta
Father

Neha Gupta’s parents began
taking her to visit orphanages
when she was one.

W

hen I was growing up
in India, my father
would tell me if you
want to celebrate a
birthday or an anniversary or anything at home, first go to the
orphanage or the leprosy center
and give some gifts, or work over
there — then come back in the
evening and celebrate at home.
I grew up with that, but for me, in
a way, it was a chore. I was doing it
not because I wanted to do it but
because my father told me to do it.
We went through years of doing
that, I grew up with that concept
and that was the end of it in a way.
When we were in New Zealand
where Neha was born, I was telling
my wife about what my father used
to do and she said, ‘That may have
been a great idea. Next time we’re
in India, we’ll take Neha to the
orphanage’.
So every year we would go to
India, Neha would spend quite a bit
of time at the orphanage. As far as I
recall, she was one year old or so
when she started going to the orphanage, just playing around with the
kids. When she was three, we moved to the US but continued going to India.
When she turned nine, she started talking to the kids
instead of just playing with them and realized how much
they didn’t have in terms of education or healthcare. At that
point she said, ‘Oh, I’m going to come back next year and
build you a library. I’m going to give you books and things...’
We thought this is just a nine year old getting excited and
will not do anything. We came back to the US after our
vacation and she immediately went down to the basement,
collected all her toys, put out pamphlets in the neighborhood and did a huge garage sale.
I think in that first garage sale itself, she collected 700,
800 dollars. By the time we went back for our vacation to
Yamuna Nagar, about five hours from Delhi, she had collected about 5,000 dollars and built a library. She gave sandals and books and things to the kids.
It was really encouraging, just to see the smile on a child’s
face and that encouraged her to carry on forward.
She was nine, we were not sure whether it was a passing
fad or if it was going to continue. We said for whatever time
it lasts, it’s a good idea, at least some people will get help.
When she went back the first time with all the money and
built the library, just seeing how appreciative the kids were
and what an impact she could make on her own, that’s
what triggered the whole thing.
Otherwise, before that it was like I’m playing with the
kids, I’m enjoying my time, they’re enjoying theirs. She
would teach them English and naturally, they would laugh
at her accent and everything. I mean, they had a good time
but it wasn’t anything concrete.
When she did her first project and was successful, that’s
what kicked her into overdrive.
It really took off when she was about 10-and-a-half, 11. At
that point we said we need to formalize it into a non-profit.
That’s when our assistance to her came into being where we
had to start talking to lawyers about forming a non-profit

COURTESY: EMPOWER ORPHANS

‘A smile on a
child’s face – is
what encouraged
her to carry on’
and the accounting of the organization. We helped in the
background work but in terms of the project, in terms of
fundraising, she comes up with those on her own.
We’re definitely very surprised that it’s grown to such a
large organization, the amount of money that she’s collected, the number of children she’s impacted and also the
number of projects she’s conducted.
I would not say that it’s because of my wife or me. It is
Neha because of whom this work continues because actually, with the work that my wife and I do, we’re quite busy
and if it was left to us, it would have fizzled out earlier on.
She was a relatively shy girl as an eight or a nine year old.
I feel she’s impacted 25,000 kids and done so much for
them but I tell her that maybe she got more out of it than
anyone else because her character, her whole personality
has developed.
She has become extremely confident. She can stand up in
front of a thousand people and start talking about her
cause. She’s passionate. In a way, all of that came about
because of her work. If she hadn’t done it, she may have
continued to be a shy girl and taken part in some activities
on the periphery but not really lead such work. She’s devel-

oped a lot of leadership skills
doing this work.
She is an extremely compassionate person. Even if we go on a holiday somewhere else in the world,
she’s always looking for an opportunity saying, ‘Yeah, maybe I can
do some project in this place.’
For example, I went to Israel for
work and she was like, ‘Oh dad, if
you have some time, can you see if
there are any orphanages where
we can do something over there?’
Or if I go to Bangalore, she’s
always giving me tasks to save
kids. ‘Why don’t you go meet this
orphanage? I’ve talked to them
and maybe we can do something.’
She’s always trying to find
ways to expand because it is
just in her heart to continue on
with the work because that’s the
person she is.
People’s reactions to her work
have been really positive but there
were a lot of negative responses
also. There was, a time, where people would directly tell
her, ‘Why do you want to do anything for kids halfway
around the world when we have poverty over here?’ and
these were not kids but adults telling her this.
She was like, ‘Okay, I didn’t know about that but I will
research it’ and she did research it and found out about
underprivileged kids in the Philadelphia region. In fact, she
opened up a library in Feltonville School over here where
92 percent of the kids, I think, are below the poverty line.
Then, she opened up a computer center in her hospital,
gave thousands and thousands of toys to hospitalized children. Till now, she’s given about 250 van loads of home
goods to families in the Bucks County area. She continued
to do a lot here also because she was able to turn that negativity into a positive.
I was there when people were telling her that. It was during a craft fair where she had set up a stall to sell some of
the things that she had made to raise funds. So naturally, as
a father I was a bit upset and angry when people were
telling her that. But she, in her way, calmed me down and
said, ‘Let me deal with it’ and what she told them was pretty good, actually.
What she basically said was thanks for letting me know
because I wasn’t aware of the situation of the kids over here
but if you give me your address and your phone
number, I’m going to definitely do a project
over here and I welcome you to come and join
me to volunteer at this project.
I think that was a good answer. A better one
than I would have given because I would have
just been angry.
The challenging part, especially in middle
school, was getting her peers to join in.
Naturally kids are not interested in community
work by and large, and especially when the
4M92
cause initially was to help kids in India.
So it was always, ‘Oh that’s Neha’s thing’ and

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M90

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘As a woman and a mother, I’m enjoying the
strength and confidence Neha has developed’
Amruta Gupta
Mother

From seeing Neha Gupta facing bad
times with friends as a child because
they didn’t understand her work, her
mother is now happy to see young
adults come together to support
Empower Orphans.

W

hen Neha first thought
about doing what she does,
I was a little cynical about
the whole thing, thinking
that this was a fad. We really did not
envision that she would be persistent
and she would continue to have the passion to really help these underprivileged
children. So, to see her grow from that
nine year old to a 19 year old who continues to exhibit passion, compassion,
empathy, and has a goal in mind and
focuses strength of body and mind to
continue to pursue that goal even with
obstacles in their way — it’s been very,
very interesting journey to watch that.
There have certainly been many highs
and a lot of successes but there have
been stumbles along the way as well,
and it’s been interesting to see how she’s
learned from those stumbles to become
stronger for them.
Neha knows her mind. She’s determined. And she’s not afraid to stand by
her convictions. This is the pursuit of a
goal. She knows her goal and she will
stand by her conviction of getting to
her goal.
As an adult, we see many people who
have goals; we pursue our goals in our careers and our personal lives and not always are we mindful of how our trajectory, from point A to point B, affects other people.
What’s interesting to me, and I’m interested in seeing how
this plays out as Neha becomes an adult, from a 19 year old
to a 29 year old. All these years she’s never intentionally
stepped on anybody’s toes. She’s been mindful of other people’s feelings. That’s the interesting combination of a pursuit
of a goal and yet being mindful of other people.
In the business world I don’t see it. I rarely see it. There
either you get left by the side or you make it and sort of step
on very many toes along the way.
I honestly don’t know how she strikes that balance. I
think it’s a lot of introspection on her part, probably, a
child’s introspection, which is now maturing to say, ‘Let me
put myself in somebody else’s shoes and see how they feel.’
How would I feel if somebody did that to me? Or giving the
person the benefit of the doubt.
I think she gets it from the collective environment not
only in our overall immediate family but the broad family
on both sides — Vikas’s grandfather, my father, my mother.
On my side of the family, we’re very strong women. I
think she gets a lot of strength from knowing that she’s following in the footsteps of her great-great-grandmother,
great-grandmother, her mother. That blend of I need to do
what I need to do and yet have the softest heart, I think it’s
because of the overall environment that she belongs to.
Living a whole continent away from India, it is very hard

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for people to imagine the true plight of these children. So in
the best of times, it’s hard to raise money. When Neha was
growing up, we were going through a recession; we went
through two sets of recessions. So, it was quite challenging.
There were many times when she was very dejected. She
would go out into the neighborhood, try and raise money
and have five bucks to show for three hours of walking
about in the cold, in the snow or the rain. Or she would be
told that charity begins at home and why should we help
you. There would be tears.
Many a time she had to face real issues. There were kids
who couldn’t quite understand why Neha was doing what
she was doing and so she had a hard time with that and
kids can be kids, right? There were certainly times that
were not good for her. I felt like she was going to give up
and say it wasn’t worth it and that it was easier to fit in
and be the average teenager — not to say that she didn’t
have fun — but she didn’t.
I had to be a mentor; I had to be a counsel, I had to be
her mother; I had to be her friend. We would role play how
to respond at times if somebody was mean, if somebody
gave her an answer that was unacceptable. We would practice together; we would practice in front of the mirror.
Sometimes I would cry with her.
She’s come out of it as a much stronger person, somebody
who has even stronger convictions. She’s got a group of
young adults now who are committed to the cause and
spend time with her and Empower Orphans. What a great

personal victory for her to be this lone
ranger trying to accomplish something
to having a network of young adults, not
only here but all over the world who are
pursuing the same cause.
Her confidence has grown. I’m her
mother but I have to say she’s not arrogant. She’s a really nice young woman.
I would say I am probably her biggest
critic too, but (I have to say)... She’s
humble.
Neha being recognized with the International Children’s Peace Prize was so,
so magical. I wouldn’t say it was a culmination because she didn’t have a
really long road to go but she was recognized and she deserved the recognition. But for me and some others it has
been about seeing her grow up into a
woman who has confidence, who
knows what she wants to be and why.
She wants to become a doctor not because every desi girl
becomes a doctor but because she wants to help those in
need and provide the sort of care that she got. She realized
the value of good care and now after her own medical challenges, that conviction has become even stronger. As a
woman and as a mother, I’m enjoying the strength and confidence that she’s developed.
Did she tell you that she had a fall last October and she
was concussed for a semester of freshman year? Since then,
I feel that life doesn’t work out the way that we always want
it to. Life happens to everybody. Somebody sooner, somebody later. But I would really, really like for her to realize
her dreams and become a doctor specializing in kids and
concussion rehab.
If she is a doctor she will be able to help children in person, hands-on with their health care, enabling them to lead
better lives. Now she has to go out and get doctors as volunteers or we have to pay for their services. If she’s a doctor,
which is why she has always so wanted to be a doctor, she
can support them. It’s a combination of pursuing your personal and professional goal and having it all together, and I
really hope and pray that she is able to realize that.
Amruta Gupta is Vice President of Consumer and
Shopper Marketing of the Health Care Vertical for the
Symphony IRI Group.
She spoke to Chaya Babu.

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M89
Vikas Gupta
‘She’s too good a person and
too nice’. They just didn’t want
to do anything with her cause
at all. It was just trying to convince them to help out but her
attitude has always been that
I’m going to continue doing
what I’m doing, irrespective of
whether I get help or not.
Things started changing
when she went into high
school where she started finding kids who were more like
her. Now in university, it’s a
totally different ball game
where she says that she wants
to open up a chapter and then
at multiple universities in the
US and then around the
world.
More than a hundred people
came for her first meeting. It’s
a different thing when people
want to do this work even
though in university people
don’t have the time. But she’s
finding like-minded people.
As a profession, she wants to
be a pediatrician and continue
working with children but at
the same time continue running her organization. What
she always says is that she
wants to take it along the line
of Doctors Without Borders,
where she’s has a medical
team working in multiple
parts of the world, helping
children.
My wife and I are extremely
proud, not only of the awards
that she’s got but the impact
she’s made and also, just as a
person. We’re proud that she
has remained very humble.
Through all this, in front of
her friends, I’ve never seen her
bragging. In fact, until she got
the International Children’s
Peace Prize, none of her
friends even knew the amount
of work that she’s done.
She tries to keep her charity work separate from her
friends, especially the
awards, because she doesn’t
want them to think that
she’s a celebrity and start
treating her differently. She
wants them to only help out
with her causes. n
Vikas Gupta is a Senior
Director at Oracle.
He spoke to Chaya Babu.

Lisa Matthews
Principal

W

‘Her heart is in the
right place. Her goal
is just to help’

hen Neha was in high
school, she drove by a
school that caught her
attention. It was our old
building, but it was no
longer housing the school. She contacted us
and said that she saw that school on the
boulevard and thought it would be good
to do something charitable for the students.
So, we welcomed her to come in to our
new building, the actual school, which is a
little off the boulevard in Philadelphia.
She originally came with some clothing,
items that she had collected from her
community, and our families were very
happy. We gave them out at a back-toschool night.
She first brought things like comforters
and bed sheets, and then she wanted to do
some more. We don’t have a school library
in its traditional form, so she collected
some books and donated them to the
school — we were able to fill the library
area with lots of books for students that
they could check out and use during the
course of the day. That’s the kind of heartfelt activity she did that helped our students and which they were very appreciative of.
In the past, she also brought some toy
items and then more recently she brought
jackets and hats for the students as well as
for some of our adults in the community.
That, again, was very well-received. So
Neha Gupta was recently at Feltonville Intermediate School donating hats and jackets, and
we’re just happy to have her actually conboard games to the students.
tribute, and she’s kept in touch over the
FACEBOOK.COM/EMPOWERORPHANS
years. Whenever she’s had an opportunity to
an open heart and I think that’s good. I think
In addition, teachers often use it as a
donate something to the school, she’s found a
she’s very humble and not seeking a lot of
resource because if they want to get some
way to do that.
attention or praise.
books for their class, they’ll go and take some
We are in a struggling community, and the
It stands out in particular because we don’t
things out to bring back later, so that’s been
school has a 100 percent free lunch program.
really have a lot of people who have anything
helpful in the sense of getting more books
Our children are majority Latino: about a 65
to give. We don’t get a lot giving and a lot of
into the hands of students. Neha probably
percent Latino population and about 25 pervolunteerism or service. We just don’t get
donated between 800 to 1,000 books, so it
cent African American. The rest is made up of
that. So to be able to have someone do that is
was incredibly helpful
Asian and Arabic students. And as I mengood and for it to be a child — I know she’s a
Neha and I have developed a relationship.
tioned, she was just driving down Roosevelt
young lady now — but at the time, to have a
From getting to know her, I think she’s just
Boulevard, the lower parts of Boulevard,
child who is willing to give to other children is
very genuine. I think her heart is in the right
which is a more rough part of the commuremarkable.
place and her goal is just to help — that’s
nity. Something moved her as she drove
We had a chance to see her again maybe
always good to see.
down the Boulevard. So just putting that
about two months ago with the jackets, so it
There doesn’t appear to be any other
in the frame of mind of a high school stuwas really nice to see her as this young
motives behind it outside of just an opportudent says a lot about Neha.
woman in college. But she still has the same
nity to help and give. For instance, more
I don’t know if the work she has done at our
spirit, which is defined by that giving and carrecently, when she came and gave us jackets,
school is necessarily measurable, quantifiably,
ing. I think Neha will always keep us in mind.
she said, “You know, if you need any more,
but what I will say is that the students were
It’s wonderful that she’s getting an opportunijust call. So when we ended up with some
definitely happy at that point of time to
ty to be recognized for her work. n
more people who said, ‘Well, I would like one
receive those books and the other things.
of those jackets’, because they were really nice
They decorated and put some curtains up
Lisa Matthews is the Principal at Feltonville
jackets and we called her, she said to just
and chairs in the area where we put the
Intermediate School, a grades 3 to 5 school in
come.
books, and we also use it for a computer lab.
a low-income section of the School District of
We sent someone and she just donated
They made cozy places where students could
Philadelphia. Neha first started working with
more to our community here. So now, if you
go and read. We also have an after-school
the school about five years ago and has been
walk around the community you see a lot of
program, and the kids in that take advantage
donating to the community there ever since.
people with all the same jackets on (laughs).
of that room as well because they’re seated
She spoke to Chaya Babu.
It was just wonderful to see how she has such
there. And they use it.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M93

Presented by

VIVEK

RANADIVÉ

INDIA

ABROAD
BUSINESS

VISIONARY OF
THE YEAR
2014
For being a tech
visionary; for being the
first Indian American to
own an NBA franchise;
for being a trailblazing
entrepreneur.

THE EMPIRE
BUILDER
Whether or not you’ve been lucky
enough to cross paths with business
tycoon Vivek Ranadivé, there’s a big
chance that his work in the global tech
arena and sports has touched your life.
Simanta Roy Buck finds out how the
winner of the inaugural
India Abroad Business Visionary
of the Year did it.
COURTESY: VIVEK RANADIVÉS OFFICE

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M94

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

THE EMPIRE
BUILDER

V

ivek Ranadivé’s mantra has consistently been to
never be afraid to try something new — which
is probably why he’s got quite the list of titles on
his figurative business card: Entrepreneur,
author, CEO, NBA majority owner, engineer,
philanthropist, coach, elocutionist, and as he is known
endearingly in Silicon Valley because of his revolutionary
work in digitizing Wall Street in the 1980s, ‘Mr Real Time.’
Whether or not you’ve been lucky enough to cross paths
with the business tycoon, there’s a big chance Ranadivé’s
work in the global tech arena has touched your life. That’s
because the California company he founded back in 1997,
Tibco, has its hands in virtually every commercial and business sector in the world.
There are railroad companies that use Tibco’s software to
ensure on-time trains, shipping companies that utilize it to
enable customers to track packages, and phone companies
that employ it to ensure you don’t unsubscribe from their
services.
Ranadivé’s $4 billion enterprise has found a way to effectively harness big data and moving information, ensuring
that all available and necessary pieces speak to each other
in a way that optimizes performance — and, in a big way, a
company’s bottom line. It’s the idea of The Information Bus
— or ‘TIB,’ the prefix for Tibco.
“I move more information on our backbone in a day than
Twitter moves in a month,” says Ranadivé, who exited as the
company’s CEO in 2014 and is now a director. “Before that,
the world wasn’t on time. And our software helped to make
the world on time.”
This “in real-time” idea was first introduced with one of
the 57-year-old entrepreneur’s biggest milestones of yore,
the revamping of Wall Street. Before Ranadivé, the financial sector ran on batch-processing technology — where
information was collected first over a period of time, and
then financial decisions were made based on that potentially outdated data; it was a method hardly amenable to the
continual changes that make Wall Street the volatile ecosystem that it is. He created the technology that, for the first
time ever, integrated stock quotes, financial information,
and finance news just as the information became available
in real-time.
Today, more than 4,000 organizations are reliant on
Ranadivé’s trademark concept, including JP Morgan Chase,
Delta Airlines, and even Homeland Security’s Citizenship
and Immigration Service, all of which juggle lots of information flowing in from multiple sources.
With all this in mind, it’s hard to believe that Ranadivé,
whose net worth is now reported to be over $700 million,
arrived to the United States at 17 with approximately $50 in
his pocket and one semester’s worth of tuition.
Ranadivé’s story really started in Bombay, when, inspired
by the 1969 moon landing and a documentary about MIT,
he decided he too wanted to be a part of the world that
achieved great things. So, he applied and was admitted to
MIT. For him, it seemed, that was the easy part. He then
camped overnight outside the Reserve Bank of India in an
effort to convince the office to allow him to exchange his
rupees for American dollars, a prohibited action at the time.
Again, Ranadivé resolutely surmounted that challenge.
“I’m always thinking in terms of opportunities,” Ranadivé
says. “Sure, there might be obstacles. That’s just an oppor-

tunity to try to find a way to come up with something new
to get you around the obstacle.”
The concept of this eternal, unwavering optimism no
doubt plays a contributing factor in his accomplishments,
though there’s a bit of humility in the formula, too.
Conversations with Ranadivé are laidback and easy, and his
cadence is slow and congenial. He seems quick to remember your name and say it often.
“I’m not the smartest guy, so I’ve always believed in surrounding myself with people who are smarter than me,”
Ranadivé, who has degrees from Harvard and MIT, says.
He’s referring not only to his advisors, executives, engineers, and sales team at TIBCO, but also the leadership
group with whom he shares ownership of the NBA basketball team, the Sacramento Kings. This delegation includes

Steve Chen, the cofounder of
YouTube; retired NBA basketball
guru Shaquille O’Neal; and QUALCOMM founder Paul Jacobs.
Ranadivé, currently based in his
beloved California, made history in
2013 when he bought the basketball
team for a cool $348 million and
became the first NBA majority owner
of Indian descent. The deal also
anchored the purple and silver team
to the state’s capital, trumping a deal
that would have moved it Seattle —
and broken the collective heart of
Sacramento.
“It was clear that, without a sports
team, the city would be decimated,”
Ranadivé says.
He cited ancient Rome, where coliseums historically centered cities.
“Sacramento has no other sports
team — it doesn’t have a football
team, hockey team, basketball team, or college team.”
As a lover of the game of basketball, he eventually
thought, “Maybe I’m meant to do this.”
But Ranadivé, though perennially a fitness
buff, hadn’t held a basketball during his entire
childhood in Bombay, perhaps unsurprisingly.
His interest in the game started about 10 years
ago, when he, in his own words, “foolishly” volunteered to coach his then 12-year-old daughter’s basketball team. He saw it as a way to
spend more time with her.
Though the girls on his team did not have the
physical advantage some of the other teams in
4M95
the league had size-wise and Ranadivé didn’t
have the experience of some of the other coach-

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M95

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M94
Vivek Ranadivé
es, he applied his knowledge of numbers
and equations to his coaching strategy.
He had his girls pressure the offensive
team the entire length of the basketball
court — instead of half of the court, as is
generally played. Though this “full-court
press” style was a non-traditional method,
Ranadivé wanted to up the chances of his
team having possession of the ball as much
as possible. It worked: The girls went on
the national championship that year.
The story is now immortalized in the first
chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book,
David and Goliath, a meditation on
approaching and overcoming obstacles by
thinking differently.
So what do you get when you combine a
tech-savvy entrepreneur with purple and
silver? Perhaps the most technologically
gifted NBA franchise in history.
Ranadivé already has big plans for putting Sacramento on the world map as a
futuristic ‘City 3.0’ of sorts, referring to a
billion-dollar development effort to create a
new basketball arena a few blocks from the
capitol building that hopes to be “the
world’s smartest building.”
“There will be a gigabyte of data built into
every seat,” Ranadivé said.
Here’s the vision: Via your mobile phone,
the arena will be able to communicate the
best time you should leave home to minimize hitting traffic — and it will also help
you find an open parking space once you’re
there. The building will be a ‘ticketless,
cashless experience’ where you won’t need
to take out your smartphone when you
walk through the gates, as the arena will
utilize facial-recognition technology
instead.
All of this is deeply routed in channeling
immense amounts of data. You see, big
numbers don’t intimidate Ranadivé. That’s
why he’s also got his sights set on bringing
basketball to India, a country of 1.2 billion.
The massive effort has already begun.
“We’ve helped fund courts (in India); we’ve
had clinics over there; we’ll keep sending
players over there; we’ve sent our dancers
over there,” Ranadivé said.
The Kings broadcasted 20 games in India
last season, and they have a team Web site
completely in Hindi.
He’s also banking on the game’s natural
appeal and accessibility. “It’s a game that
can be played indoors and outdoors, by one
person or a few people, by girls and by boys,
in rich countries and in poor countries, in
cities and in villages — you don’t need a lot
of space.”
“I love cricket, but it kind of belongs to a
past era where time moved slower, and
you could spend six days playing a match
and there were big fields everywhere,”
Ranadivé says.

Vivek Ranadivé at MIT, a dream that began in India.
COURTESY: VIVEK RANADIVÉS OFFICE

On the other hand, “Basketball is two
hours of extreme action packed into it. If
you play 20 minutes of basketball, you get a
huge amount of exercise. You play two
hours of cricket and you could still get no
exercise.”
The shift, Ranadivé says, won’t happen
overnight, but he has got an ambitious plan
to collaborate with Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi that would weave basketball into the country’s infrastructure by
building arenas and making sports more
culturally pervasive than it is now.
Leave it to Ranadivé, who transformed a
decade-old love affair with the game of basketball into an empire.
I wonder if you could take us back in
time a little bit and put us in the shoes of a
very young Vivek Ranadivé. What were
your hopes and dreams as a young boy in
Bombay?
The defining moment in my life happened when I was a little boy growing up in
Bombay. It was the middle of the night, and
I had my ear plastered to a little transistor
radio, and I heard these words: ‘One small
step for man; one giant leap for mankind.’ I
was listening, of course, to the Voice of
America. They were broadcasting live the
moon landing.
I thought to myself, Wow, this is incredible. Who were these people who were able to
take a man, put him in a box, and propel
him 250,000 miles to land on a rock flawlessly the very first time? What brilliance,
what courage, what vision has executed
that? I said, I want to be one of them. That’s
when I decided I want to study science and
technology — and I that I would to try to
find a way to get to America.
There’s a very famous story that your
father gave you the equivalent of $50 and

the first semester’s tuition before your
arrival in the United States. What was going
through your mind at that time?
At the time, the Indian rupee was not a
convertible currency. So, there was a limit
to how much you could get. Even to get
that tuition and the $50, I had to talk my
way into the office of the head of the
Reserve Bank of India to convince him to
give me any kind of foreign exchange.
I literally camped outside his office all
day. So I guess there a theme. I wasn’t
thinking, Wow, how am I going to manage?
It was more like, This is great. I’m going to
have my tuition paid for. Then I can go get
loans from MIT, and I can work, and I can
make my way.
There’s still this sort of eternal optimism
that I remember from the last time I interviewed you, about six months ago. I was trying to ask you, “What was difficult or challenging in your life?” And you kept saying, “I
approach things more as an opportunity.”
I’m just not a person who thinks in those
ways. I’m always thinking in terms of
opportunities. Sure, there might be obstacles. That’s just an opportunity to try to find
a way to come up with something new to
get you around the obstacle. So yeah, I continue to have the optimism of yore.
When did you know you were here in the
US for the long haul?
Well, I had that defining moment when I
was a little kid that I wanted to study technology. As I started working and when I
came to California, that’s when I felt like
this was just an amazing place. This is
where I wanted to be. It just kind of happened. I don’t know that there was a point
in time when I made a conscious decision
that I was never going back. It was more
that I fell in love with California as the
state. It just evolved that way.

Your concept of real-time analytics
changed the world, and now Tibco’s platform has its hands in almost every single
industry. What gave you the inspiration and
the idea to come up with real-time analytics?
My own background had been as a hardware engineer. What I found was that the
hardware was always on time and always
on budget, and the software never seemed
to get there. So, I wondered, Why isn’t software done like hardware?
In hardware you have a bus, and you have
these things called interrupts, which are
real-time alerts. Almost all of the ideas I
came up with in software were stolen from
what I had learned in hardware. I applied
hardware concepts and engineering to software, and that, as you mentioned, was a
revolution. Before that the world wasn’t on
time. And our software helped to make the
world on time.
I read that you said you could have solved
the problems with America’s health-care
system for a few million dollars. Is that true?
Well, I felt that there’s many problems
that involve connecting information; right
now, a lot of the cost of health care is really
in the back office and because of silos of
information. I’m a big believer in integrating information and making it available:
Getting information in the right place at
the right time. If you put information in the
right context, you can make the world a
better place.
That definitely applies to the health-care
industry, which has massive silos of information costs associated with that. If you
could connect all of that so that, if you
walked into a hospital, the hospital was
able to check into you and had all of your
records and was able to connect everything,
that would make a serious dent in the cost
and the quality of the care.
Can you talk about your kids? What do
you think is the most important quality for
them to have as they grow up?
My daughter, Anjali (22), went to Yale.
She’s a marine biologist and became a
singer. She’s achieved quite a bit of success,
and she has just started.
I also have two sons. One’s in technology
(Aneel, 31). The other was in technology
and is back in school studying to be a doctor (Andre, 25).
What I’ve always tried to impart to my
kids is obviously to get the foundation of a
great education, but really
that you have to try to have a
bigger purpose.
So, my daughter is a singer,
but she already has a charity
cause where she donates her
earnings. She’s trying to save
the ocean; she’s trying to prevent the extinction of wolves
and other creatures.
So, get a great education and
whatever you do, you work
4M96
hard and never give up, but

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M96

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M95
Vivek Ranadivé
also have a bigger purpose. I think it’s really
important first and foremost to be a good person and care about more than yourself and care
about the world around you. It makes you
happy and thus makes you more successful.
I was talking to your cousin, Vaishali Dhote;
she said the same thing about your philosophy.
You met my favorite cousin of all. I call her
Bunny! I haven’t heard the name Vaishali in a
while (laughs_. Her dad was a doctor and
opened a hospital, 40, 50 years ago, which
catered to the people who didn’t have health
care. This was way back, so there’s a long tradition about this.
I know you’re a big Malcolm Gladwell fan.
What’s it like to have Gladwell write about you
and have that story about coaching your daughter’s basketball team now so famous?
It’s beyond humbling.
Obviously he’s one of the best-selling authors
of our time and a global icon and just an amazing guy. One day, I woke up in the morning and
looked down at my iPhone, and it said that
Jimmy Fallon is following me on Twitter. I
thought, Wow, how does Jimmy Fallon even
know who I am? Then I found out that Malcolm
had been on his late show. So that’s the story of
how Fallon found out who I was (laughs).
Malcolm is a brilliant guy. It’s always a treat and
pleasure to spend time talking to him. It’s humbling, what else can I say?
This year you joined President Obama and a host of other
CEOs to India during Republic Day celebrations to discuss
ways to increase bilateral trade between the two countries by
2020. Can you talk a bit about this and your plans?
It was me and about half a dozen other CEOs: Ajay
Banga from Mastercard, Bob Iger of Disney, Arne Sorenson
of Marriott, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, and so on. It was basically a three-day road trip with some amazing people. The
goal was to increase trade between our countries 10-fold. So
there was us, and there was also a delegation from the
Indian side.
We hit all the normal things like the need for infrastructure and the simplifying of regulations. One delegate said,
‘If you open a hotel in Singapore, it takes six permits. If you
do it in India, it takes 106 permits.’
All of the things that we of Indian origin are used to hearing about: Simplifying bureaucracy, a more simplified tax
code, and so on.
Even at Tibco, I have thousands of engineers in India, but
at home, they don’t have Internet access. And traffic is two
hours each way, so no matter how good the programmers
are, you still need the infrastructure, which is everything
from water to roads to airports.
We covered a wide range of subjects and we basically
came up with an action plan for the things that India
needs to do and what is it we can do to help facilitate that.
I think it was a very productive meeting, and we came
away excited about what the India-US relationship will
look like in the future.
You can imagine what a thrill it was for me, being of
Indian origin, to sit there with the prime minister of the
country of my origin, and the President of my new country,
the United States (laughs).
What do you think of Narendra Modi?
I have the highest regard for him. I think that he’ll go

Vivek Ranadivé with his
children — Anjali, a marine
biologist and singer; Aneel,
who is in technology; and
Andre, who is back in school
studying to be a doctor.
COURTESY: VIVEK RANADIVÉS OFFICE

down as one of the great leaders of the 21st century. I
think he’s a man that has a vision; he’s able to translate
that vision into something that the common man can
understand.
He’s also action-oriented, and he’s got the charisma, the
intellect, the vision, and the stalwart to see that vision
through. I have great optimism for India and am very excited about him being our prime minister.
I saw him at New York in September. He spoke at
Madison Square Garden, where, by the way, my daughter
sang. He got the treatment of a rock star. There were over
20,000 people that were just so excited to see him there.
They had a VIP entrance for me, and I didn’t take it; I
just took the regular entrance. I was in this massive crowd
of people getting in, and everyone so was excited; I just felt
the energy, the hope, and the optimism that all these people
had. When I went into the arena in Madison Square
Garden, he gave an absolutely inspirational speech. So for
me as a person of Indian origin, it was incredibly exciting.
Cricket is India’s sport, but your plan is to make basketball
huge there, as well. Can you talk about your vision for the
India-US relationship with basketball in mind?
India wants to be a world power, and India’s knocking
at that door. Sports has to be a part of it. You can’t be a
world power and get no medals in the Olympics — maybe
get one in hockey or one in shooting but not really be on
the sports map.
I see basketball as the sport of the 21st century, and I see
basketball as a sport that can take off in India and provide
yet another reason for India and the United States to be
together. I see it as a sport that over the next 10 years will
grow to be the second-most popular sport in India.
Obviously, it will never surpass cricket as the national pastime, but if it’s the second-most popular, that’s a big deal.
Actually I went to India with our new (NBA) commis-

sioner Adam Silver, and they’re investing heavily in India.
We already taught a million boys and girls to bounce basketballs, and that number will go to 10 million. We have
clinics we’re conducting, we sent coaches there, games are
broadcast live in India. It’s going to take 10 years, but I see
India emerging as a super power and basketball becoming
a mainstream sport there. All of that is amazing.
One of my hopes is that I’m able to take the Sacramento
Kings to India. One of the things I said to Modi was that,
‘Look, you spoke at Madison Square Garden; there’s not a
single arena like that in the entire country of India. It’s a
country of a billion people, and you don’t have a single
arena. Where I live in California, I can drive around the
block, and there are probably five arenas like that, you
know?’
So I think, even hosting a game there, it means that when
you talk about the Smart Cities of the Future — an initiative that Modi has — an arena has to be a part of that.
We also talked about the idea of creating an Indian tournament that I call Monsoon Madness (a bit like the March
Madness concept in US College Basketball).
The sport of kabaddi has taken off in India right now.
That’s kind of a pre-colonial sport, and basketball is a post-colonial sport. I see a great future
for basketball over there, and I think it goes
along with everything else that Modi wants to
achieve: Building cities, being a global power,
cementing the relationship with America and
American culture — all of these things go hand
in hand.
After this conversation, I’m going to have to
go ahead and look up Monsoon Madness,
because that sounds pretty interesting.
4M98
Right now it’s just in my mind, and there’s
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Left, work is on at the Sacramento
Kings stadium, which is set to open
in 2016. Below, Ranadivé at a game
with NBA legend Bill Russell.

Vivek Ranadivé
the NBA and people in India like
(Reliance Industries Chairman)
Mukesh Ambani about creating a
league and I dubbed it Monsoon
Madness. It doesn’t exist yet; it’s just in
my imagination.
I hope that in the next couple of years
you’ll be able to look it up and it’ll be
for real (laughs).
What has been the most rewarding
thing about owning the Kings?
It’s been an incredible privilege, and
an incredible honor to be owner of the
kings. We’re investing a billion dollars
into the downtown (revitalization).
We’re creating 12,000 jobs. We’re revitalizing the city and creating what I
dubbed the City of the Future. We’re
building the world’s smartest building,
the world’s best arena. So, there’s a lot of
great things that we’re doing that go
beyond basketball.
But one of the things to keep in
mind is that the biggest misconception that one can have is that I own
the Kings. This is true for sports
teams in general: They’re really
owned by the fans, by the community, by the city. I’m simply a steward
for them. I think once you kind of
digest that, then you can start to
understand how to navigate the ownership. You think it belongs to you. It
really doesn’t (laughs).
I was in Chicago just a couple of days
ago, and the Chicago Bulls had just
fired their head coach — and that was
like the headline story. Obama was
speaking about it. I was like, Wow,
we’ve got wars, droughts in California,
and potential financial crises everywhere, and the headline that everyone
cares about is that the Bulls fired their
coach. So, that just tells you what a big
deal sports has become for people, and
really the team belongs to the city.
What about the new stadium are you
most excited about?
It just got voted (by Sports
Illustrated) as one of the 10 best buildings in the world. It’s the only building
(on the list) in North America. I have
this notion that the arena should have
to check into you instead of you having to check into the
arena. It’ll guide you to your parking spot, it’ll tell you how
to get to your seat, it’ll tell you which is the shortest line to
the bathroom, it’ll guide you to the food, it’ll be the world’s
first indoor-outdoor arena.
We can lift the doors up and have it be indoors and outdoors, which for a basketball arena has never been done.
It’ll have more computing power and bandwidth going into
seats than anyone’s ever had. It’ll be the world’s greenest
building. It’ll be the most comfortable in terms of how the
cooling happens. The acoustics will be the best. On many
different dimensions we’re pushing the state of the art on
what a building should be like.

I like to say that it’ll be first arena of the 21st century —
and it will become the communal fireplace. It’ll be very
intimate in terms of how the seating is structured. People
will feel like they’re right on top of the action.
Only 50 of the days will be games; 200 will be concerts.
So the same will be true when you’re enjoying concerts: it’ll
be very intimate.
We’re very excited. It’ll be completed in record time:
October 2016. It’ll be not just a sports arena but also a
great arena for arts and music.
Yeah, October 2016. That’s coming right up.
I have to thank the state; the state really got right behind
me. The governor, the city, the senate, the assembly, they

got together and passed the law SB 743
(a law designed to remove roadblocks to
arena construction that could arise from
other organizations), which makes it
possible for me to get this arena done on
time.
Things get worse before they get better. By the time we open the arena, the
Kings will be a contender; they’ll
achieve to the highest level the next few
years.
I love the idea of Bollywood Night at
the stadium. How did you come up with
that idea?
The Bollywood Night I started with
the Golden State Warriors (another basketball team Ranadivé owned before
buying the Sacramento franchise); we
adapted that with the Kings, but then
we expanded that. We had Sikh Night.
There’s a big Sikh community around
Sacramento. You can imagine what a
sight it was to see 500 sardars in purple turbans and doing bhangra and
listening to Punjabi music.
We have games broadcast in India;
we serve Indian food. So we have a
large growing Indian fan base now.
We’re the most watched team in India.
We’ve incorporated a lot of Indian
choreography and music into the
dance routines. So, we’re building on
Bollywood night to continue to shout
out to Indian fans in the Sacramento
area and beyond.
What’s the most exciting thing you’re
looking forward to in your projects or
in your life in the years ahead?
I see the next 15 years as ones where
there will be unprecedented change.
We’re truly going to make the world a
better place. We’re going to eliminate
many of the diseases that plague us
now. I think we’re entering a new era,
and I call it Civilization 3.0.
Civilization 1.0 was about the agrarian revolution — the age of the artisans, people who farm, shopkeepers,
and carpenters. Civilization 2.0 was the industrial revolution and age of the corporations and corporate efficiency.
Now we’re entering the era where the world’s largest
bookseller has no bookstores, and the world’s largest music
seller has no music stores, and the world’s largest taxi company owns no cars, and the world’s largest hotel company
owns no real estate. It’s kind of uncharted territory, so I
think the next 15 years is going to be really exciting.
I really hope that the work I’m doing with the Kings, City
3.0, working with (local universities), and thinking about
Healthcare 3.0, hopefully I can have a small tiny role in
shaping this new era — an era in which I think people’s
lives will dramatically improve. n

ur family has been in and around sports for
some time. I first experienced the American
love of sport when I came to this country in
the early 1960s. That’s when I saw my first
football game and fell in love with American

sports.
My wife played on the golf and tennis teams at UCLA,
so she shared my passion and helped nurture its growth.
When we had children, attending games became a fun
family activity for us. Marta and I are still active at the
gym and share a love of golf. Alex (Bhathal’s son) stays fit,
competing in triathlons and recently completed his first
Boston Marathon. (Daughter) Lisa’s boys are now getting
into sports, so we are keeping the passion alive for the
next generation.
In the 1990s, we co-founded the World League of
American Football with the NFL. We owned the Orlando
Thunder franchise and really enjoyed the experience and
the business of sport. In the 2000s, we looked at several
opportunities to purchase teams in football and basketball. Ultimately, we focused on basketball because we
believe that the NBA has superior growth prospects
domestically and abroad.
We came very close to buying the New Orleans Hornets
in 2012. When that deal didn’t go through, the league
facilitated an introduction to Vivek, who was close to
finalizing a deal to keep the Kings in Sacramento.
Alex and I flew to San Francisco and had a great dinner
with Vivek and his colleague Roger Craig. We knew by
reputation that Vivek was brilliant and energetic, but I
needed to make sure that he would be a good partner.
One lesson I have learned is that business is about relationships with people, and partnerships are about capabilities and trust. After meeting Vivek, hearing his vision for
the team, and understanding the economics of the deal it
was almost a no-brainer to join the group.
With the arena development, real estate, business operations, we have a very large and complex organization. Vivek
does a great job as our group’s managing partner and chairman. I believe my best role is as a sounding board and facilitator on the business side of the operation. Additionally, as
alternate governor, I assist Vivek in the Kings participation
in NBA meetings.
Building the new arena will spark a much-needed urban
renewal in downtown Sacramento. It’s definitely one of the
things that we are most passionate and excited about.
The arena is going up so incredibly fast! By fall, the entire
exterior structure will be built out, and we plan on opening
the doors on schedule in October 2016.
The adjacent mixed-use project is also on track. We’ve
recently announced that we have signed Kimpton to manage the 250-room hotel next to the arena, and we are in the
process of leasing out several restaurants and retail spaces.
There are lot of exciting announcements coming soon!
We have plans to expand our brand globally.
I know from my family in India that there’s a huge latent
demand for the sport. As India continues to develop, the
interest in sports will expand and we are convinced that
basketball will emerge as a top sport in the country.
Our game is fast paced, athletic, and high scoring. These
aspects of the game bode really well compared to soccer

Vivek Ranadivé flanked by US Congressman
Ami Bera, left, and basketball player Sim Bhullar, right,
before a game against the New Orleans Pelicans.
Left, a Kings game.
KYLE TERADA-USA TODAY SPORTS/REUTERS

and cricket.
Even though basketball has a long way to go in India, we
are making significant inroads. In November, NBA
Commissioner Adam Silver, Vivek, Vlade (Divac, former
basketball player and now Kings official) and I toured the
country and laid the groundwork for further development.
It’s already gaining exposure and popularity.
When we signed Sim Bhullar, we were bombarded with
excited notes from fellow members of the Indian community.
I think the most important thing we can do now is win
more games and become a championship-caliber team.
In all this, Vivek is brilliant, tireless, and passionate. I
have no doubt that he will make our team successful on the
court and financially. We couldn’t ask for a better leader for
the ownership group. n
Raj Bhathal is founder of Raj Manufacturing, a company
that is now one of the largest swimwear companies in the
nation, and vice chairman, Sacramento Kings. In 2013, the
Bhathal family invested in the Sacramento Kings Basketball
Holdings LLC and its affiliated entities, helping to secure the
Kings’ future in Sacramento.
He spoke to Simanta Roy Buck.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M100

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Vaishali Dhote
Cousin

Vivek Ranadivé with his grandmother in India.
Below, Ranadivé with Sim Bhullar, the first Indianorigin player in the NBA, at the India Day Parade in
New York last year. His ties with India still run deep.

O

ur fathers were brothers. We grew up
together; our families were very close. Every
time there were special holidays, like
Diwali, all the families got together to
spend a week together. We were the
youngest in our respective families. We were always playing together, and it was really wonderful.
We were three cousins, really. There was his father, my
father, and they had a sister. So the youngest of each family was Vivek, myself, and another cousin, Ajay. We called
ourselves The Three Musketeers. We always hung out
together (laughs).
Vivek’s father had a farm about two hours away from
Bombay; the Three Musketeers would
go there often. We rode bullock carts;
we drove tractors... we had great fun
doing that. We’d play with the animals
on the farm. It was one big adventure,
our lives. For Vivek, it still is. He does
look at everything with a sense of wonder. It was always, We’re going to have
a blast.
Vivek was the natural leader, and we
followed him around like little puppies.
He was my hero from way back then.
He wasn’t aggressive. He was shy,
reticent. But he had a fantastic sense of
humor, and his sense of timing was
incredible. So in a perfectly normal
conversation, he’d say something that
had everyone in splits.
Everything was an adventure to him,
and I think his life today is still like
that. His zest for life is wonderful.
Every game we played, there was an
element of mystery, there was an element of adventure.
He was full of ideas. It was a lot of
fun being with him. He was always
focused on whatever he wanted to do.
He was humble, he was soft, but he
was very determined and focused on what he wanted.
Back then, we were all too little to really see it, but he was
very determined from the start. In those days, very few people went abroad to study. He was one of the few.
His father said, ‘I’m going to pay a term’s fee, and you’re
on your own after that.’ At 17, to do that is pretty brave and
pretty incredible. But he had decided, and he was always
like that. ‘No’ was not an option in his mindset. If he decided to do something, he would do it. But I don’t think we
ever predicted that he’d be where he is today.
In spite of being who is he, he is still so humble. If you sit
down and have a conversation with him, he would never
push the fact that he is who he is. You see the pride, you see
the energy, you see the zest.
Apart from being successful, which was very important to
him, I think there’s this very strong desire to help people, or
to better their lives.
We were very privileged growing up in our families — not
privileged in terms of financial privileges, but our families
did an incredible amount for the community. Both his
father and mine, in addition to being successful in their
careers, did a tremendous amount for people.
My father started a hospital for the underprivileged. His
father worked for the fishing community. They dedicated
their lives so easily and selflessly towards helping others. I
think part of what he is doing right now comes from there.

PARESH GANDHI

really fell in love with it when his kids started playing. He
wanted to be a part of everything they did.
I haven’t seen a Sacramento Kings game, but the first
game they played after he bought the team was telecast
in Bombay. So we had a little party at home. My mom,
who was 90 then, and my aunts, and all the family in (the
area) got together and watched the game.
I do hope that one day I can come and see a game in
the new stadium. That’s a dream. It
will be electrifying to see it.
Vivek’s success fills me with immense
joy, pride, wonder. But on one level,
I’m not surprised. He was my hero
from the time I was a baby. I expected
nothing less from him. He’s worked
very hard to get where he is. He
deserves every bit of his success.
Every time I read about him, I speak
to him, it’s this sense of awe, wonder.
And again, one of the nicest things
about this is the success hasn’t changed
him as a person. When I see him, he’s
still that little boy with a glint in his
eye, and that naughty little smile on his
lips.
We don’t meet as often as I’d like to.
His life and family and everything is
now in the US. But I hope that’s going
to change, because he’s really trying to
do a lot of things with India. He wants
to bring basketball here...
It’s hard with family scattered all
over the world. But as family meet,
those years or months just melt away
and we can take up from where we left
off, and that’s the nice part of our relationship really.
The last time we met, we met after
quite a while. Once we got over that
initial joy of seeing each other, one of
the first things he said is, “All’s not
right with you. What is it?” I came out
with what was bothering me. A part of
me was probably expecting a shoulder
to cry on, some sympathy. But he said,
“Look, we’re fighters. If there’s a problem, fight. If there’s a problem, get off your butt and figure
out how we’re going to fix it.”
I think that has been his approach his entire life, because
all of us have our share of ups and downs, and he always
thought a step ahead. He’s always looking to grow in every
way. I don’t think there are any limits to his dreams. He’s
just so determined to find a solution to everything... That’s
who he is. He can inspire everyone and bring out the best
in them. n

‘Everything is an
adventure to him’
He grew up seeing it as part of our everyday lives.
When we went on holidays sometimes, it wasn’t just the
family that went. It was, “OK, there’s this other person that
we know, and they don’t get to go on vacation often, so why
don’t you take them along?” I know there’s been times
when we’ve crammed nine or 10 people in a car and driven
somewhere for holiday. I’m sure that’s where his humility
comes from.
Vivek was very, very close to his mom. She was a very
warm, very affectionate person. All of us loved her. And his
dad taught him a lot of his values in life... We’ve always
been a very close-knit family, and you see that today with
his children. He’s so close to them. He’s so proud of them.
It could be my memory failing me, but I don’t remember
Vivek being a very sporty person. School didn’t, unfortunately, give us the opportunity to play a lot of sports. He

Vaishali Dhote, or as Vivek Ranadivé endearingly calls
her,“Bunny,” is Ranadivé’s “favorite cousin.” She is an architect
specializing in interior design based in Mumbai. She is three
years younger than Ranadivé and shared a childhood with
him in the midst of 1960s-1970s Bombay.
She spoke to Simanta Roy Buck.

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M101

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M102

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Vlade Divac
Former Sacramento Kings player
and now a Kings official

B

asketball is not just a passion, but
a project for Vivek Ranadivé. He
truly believes that it’s a great catalyst for change: Changing the
community and changing the world.
Before I joined the front office, I was traveling with the team as ambassador for
China Global Games last summer. I was
introduced to Vivek and his value to the
organization. I was impressed with the mission to create the winning franchise and
enhance the lives of those he touched.
On my trip with him to India last fall, we
talked about the idea of me joining the
front office, and we decide to go forward
with that during the All-Star Game in New
York (in February). He was the guy who
approached me and asked me to join the
organization.
I knew it would be a great relationship
with Vivek and everyone in the organization. I’m so excited to be a part of it. I’m
fascinated with how he envisions the NBA.
He sees the business as a social network
and an opportunity to connect and engage
with the fans. It’s exciting for me and for
everybody here in the organization.
The NBA is involved obviously in Europe
and in Asia, mostly in China. But here at
the Kings, we are following Vivek’s lead.
His NBA 3.0 philosophy sets the tone for
everything that we do here. NBA 3.0 is
driven by three things: Technology, globalization, and community. That really fits
what we’re trying to do going forward.
We’re nationally broadcasting games;
obviously this season we televised in India,
we went to China, and next season we will
go to Mexico. There’s so much more innovation in the works.
Vivek recently visited India with NBA
Commissioner Adam Silver. All of that puts
it into perspective: Yes, we’d love to be
known as an international organization.
Basketball is a really true international
sport. Basketball is played everywhere.
When I joined the NBA in 1989, I was one
of the first international players to join the
NBA. Now 30 percent of the league is
international, so it’s going in that direction.
I didn’t speak English back then. But basketball gave me the opportunity to realize
how the world is so small and how we are
so close to each other. Yes, we have differences in our culture and our languages, but
basically there’s not much difference
between us all around the world.
I’ll tell you from my experience, when I
grew up, we wanted to watch NBA games
on a daily basis but we couldn’t. We had an
opportunity to watch maybe one or two
games in a season — and maybe the AllStar Game. But now, with technology, every
kid anywhere in the world can watch every
single game any time they want. It shows

‘Every day you can learn
something new from him’

Behind-the-scenes at a Kings Pre-Draft workout with Vivek Ranadivé, second
from left, and Vlade Divac, left. Ranadivé says he is not the smartest guy, but
believes in surrounding himself with people who are smarter than him. On
the Kings team that means a delegation that includes people like NBA
basketball gurus Vlade Divac and Shaquille O’Neal, inset.
TWITTER.COM/VIVEK
COURTESY: TWITTER.COM/SACRAMENTOKINGS

you right there that the NBA changed a lot
in the last 20+ years. And, yes, we want to
part of the huge family that lives in this
world and who loves basketball.

Our owner came from India,
which shows you right there that we
have that source of a different culture, a different view of the world;
me joining the organization now
gives another perspective on international relationships.
I love Vivek’s way of thinking. He
is totally friendly. He’s fun and a
very, very smart guy. His work in
Silicon Valley shows you that he’s
very bright. Every day you can learn
something new from him. That’s
going to make me a better person
and somebody who can use those
values and tools to help myself and
help the organization
I think we should all thank him for finding a way to keep the franchise here in
Sacramento. I was a player here, and it was

very emotional for me to see a possibility
that Kings could leave this town. He found
a way to save this organization, which
belongs to the fans.
We want to create a winning organization
that brings that excitement that we once
had here, and we want to be a well-known
international team so we can use that as a
tool to connect people, because sports is all
about that — connecting people. n
Vlade Divac, from Serbia, was one of the
first international basketball players to enter
the NBA. In his 30-year career in a jersey, he
once played for the Kings. Now, he’s part of
their front office as Vice President of
Basketball and Franchise Operations, under
Vivek Ranadivé’s leadership. Ranadivé calls
him his top basketball official.
He spoke to Simanta Roy Buck.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M103

Presented by

SHELLEY and
DONALD RUBIN

INDIA ABROAD
FRIEND OF
INDIA AWARD
2014
For their phenomenal
contribution to Himalayan
art; for their dedication to
preserving cultures; for
crafting an artistic haven
in New York City.

KEEPERS OF
A LOST ART
‘Collecting Tibetan and Indian art gave good
karma and luck, and we became manic art
collectors. We have never sold a piece of art.
Selling a work of art is like selling one of
your relatives, your children.’
Shelley and Donald Rubin, co-founders of
the Rubin Museum of Art — the greatest
collection of Himalayan Art in the Western
world — and winners of the India Abroad
Friend of India Award tell Aseem Chhabra
that the beauty of art is not in collecting,
but in sharing it.
COURTESY: THE RUBINS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M104

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

D

onald and Shelley Rubin’s
art connections happened
quite by accident.
In 1974 the young couple
was walking on Madison
Avenue during the day
when they came across a
Tibetan thangka being sold at an art gallery.
It was a White Tara. They were immediately
drawn to the painting and decided to buy it
even when they knew little about Asian and
Tibetan art.
Donald Rubin now believes that the painting brought him good luck. He later established a managed health care business
MultiPlan, which brought him a lot of financial success. In the process Donald and
Shelley started collecting more and more
Indian and Tibetan art.
“I think collecting Tibetan and Indian art
gave me good karma and luck, and we
became manic art collectors,” Donald says.
Many years later, the Rubins were considering housing a large part of their collection in
a museum space. In 1996, Donald was stuck
in traffic in a taxi in Chelsea area of
Manhattan when he saw a bankruptcy sign
stuck on the door of the old Barneys building
on 17th Street and 7th Avenue.
The high-end clothing store was cutting
back and shutting down some of its prime
retail locations. Donald checked out the
building and made an offer. Today the Rubin Museum of
Art is situated at that location. The museum hosts a collection of Himalayan art — from Tibet, other parts of South
Asia where a large Tibetan population lives in exile and art
and photographs from India.
Shelley recalls once meeting a man who gave her an
explanation for their passion for Indian and Tibetan art.
The man told her: “You didn’t find the collection. The collection found you. Because you are people who wanted to
share it.”
Most art collectors seek works by well-known painters at
auctions and through dealers because they treat the paintings as investments. But Donald and Shelley Rubin had a
much more instinctive and organic relationship to the art
they started collecting in the 1970s.
It was a natural emotional connection that still pulls them
to Tibetan and Indian art. And their big mission is to share
the art they have collected, especially with those who may
have access to museums and galleries located in the fancy
parts of Manhattan
Over the years the Rubin Museum has hosted several
remarkable exhibitions, including works from the couple’s
private collection. In 2010, the museum organized a show
called Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and
Contemporary Indian Art from the Collection of Shelley and
Donald Rubin. It was surely the largest such showing of
modern and contemporary Indian art at a museum in
Manhattan.
In 2006, the Rubin Museum of Art was the first New
York arts institution to showcase historic works related to
Sikhism. The show titled I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art
and Devotion was very well received.
The Rubin Museum of Art’s current show Collecting Art:
Buddhist Art of Kashmir and its Legacies gives viewers a
chance to look at a face of the region in conflict that is
rarely covered by the mainstream media.
The Rubins sit on the Rubin Museum of Art board. But
through their foundation they donate large sums of money

KEEPERS OF
A LOST ART
to other arts institutions in New York City, especially museums located outside Manhattan.
While they have a lot of respect for museums like MoMA,
the Met and Guggenheim, they strongly believe in bringing
the arts closer to communities and ethnic minorities that
may not be able to get to the trendy arts spaces of
Manhattan.
Donald’s Polish immigrant roots have largely shaped
this vision.
And hence over the years the Rubins have contributed
to art museums in Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Their $500,000 donation to the Bronx Museum of Arts in
March 2013 ensured free admission to the museum
through 2015. In May 2013, they gave another $500,000
to the Queens Museum.
The Queens Museum’s current show After Midnight:
Indian Modernism to Contemporary India 1947/1997
includes some of the artworks from the Rubins’ private
collection.
As Shelley told India Abroad: “Donald and I are clear that
everybody should have art and culture writ large in their
lives and have it accessible so that it becomes a part of who
they are as they grow up and when they are adults.”
The Rubins love and friendship with the arts from India
and its neighboring regions is a 40-year-old story that
began when they were simply taking a walk on Madison
Avenue. That love and friendship has become their passion,
a second nature and a calling for them.
There is a story told by many journalists, that you both

Donald, left, and Shelley Rubin, center right, host a do
at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.
COURTESY: THE RUBINS

were strolling on Madison Avenue, when you made your first
art purchase. I would love to hear details about it – was it
day or night, were you looking for art?
Shelly: It was day time and at that time we lived on 78th
Street and 2nd Avenue, and we happened to be taking a
walk. No, we were not shopping for anything. And as that
story you have heard so many times, at that time we had no
money, so obviously we were not looking to buy something.
I read that you both had $3,000 to your name.
S: (She laughs) I don’t think the need to put numbers to
everything.
Donald: I think just meeting an Indian dealer was enough
to make me rich.
And you had never collected art before?
S: I was a painter. I painted my whole life, I never sold
anything. It was at the time when I met Donald that I had
stopped working as an artist.
And you had not traveled to South Asia or the Himalayan
region?
S: No, not then.
Did you know where the art was from? Did the dealer tell
you anything?
S: Well, we knew it was Asian. I probably
thought it was Indian.
D: But at that time we didn’t have much
money. I think collecting Tibetan and Indian
art gave me good karma and luck, and we
became manic art collectors. We have never
sold a piece of art. This is what we do as an
investment or to make a profit. We gave a lot to
the museum and some to universities.
But selling work of art is like selling one of
your relatives, your children. I just can’t do it. I 4M105
am emotionally connected to the collection.

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Shelley and Donald Rubin
How often do you revisit all your art?
D: We have it at the museum. We do art
shows on the floor below here. I have now
started collecting a lot of Cuban art as well.
How did that one painting lead to an
interest in Himalayan art and then Indian
art?
S: When I met Donald, I had a couple of
Chinese art pieces in my house. But they
weren’t good. I think we both had an affinity for an Asian aesthetic. And we were
drawn in to the White Tara. I kind of loved
it. You don’t know how these things happen
in life. We both responded. We took her
home. We hung her in our home and loved
her.
There was another painting we had seen
at the gallery. So later we went back and got
that one next. And somewhere there we
met Navin Jain who definitely increased
our understanding and interest.
When did you first visit the region?
S: We went to Tibet when my daughter
was 12 or 13. We went to India with Navin
and his family a few years before that.
D: And with Navin we saw his gallery as
his larger art collection is at Sainik Farms
in Delhi.

I know sometimes this is hard to put
down, but what was the attraction you had
to the art and the region?
S: We had met somebody along the way
on this journey who said to us, ‘You didn’t
find the collection. The collection found
you. Because you are people who wanted to
share it, as opposed to people who collect
art, especially Tibetan art, often people in
the Diaspora. They don’t want to know
about it. They put it in drawers or flat files
and don’t want to share it.’
And that stuck in my mind. It almost
makes me tear up. For me that was always
the best explanation. Because it seemed like
magic and not quite understandable.
D: In the same way as now I have a passion for Cuban art. This is my theory, when
people are a little oppressed the art is better. When they are sitting in New York and
there is a pier show – there may be 3,000
paintings on the wall. If I find one or two
that I want in my apartment or my office, it
would be a lucky day for me.
S: The oppression is one thing, but a connection with culture and personal story of
life, I think that is very important. Part of
the thing that Donald is saying and reads in
the global art market is what he sees as the
lack of connection – a juicy connection to
the past.
I think that juicy connection is what we
saw in Indian and Tibetan art. And we see

The street outside the Rubin Museum of Art draped in Himalayan colors and culture.
FACEBOOK.COM/RUBINMUSEUM

that in Cuban art.
The global art market is much more
heady, much more intellectual, and sometimes terrible. But there is terrible art all
through history, not just at the pier shows.
I think what connected us to Indian and
Tibetan art was that wonderful sense of life,
color, culture, story and spirit.
From Tibetan art when did the interest
also move to Indian art? I see you had a
show on Modern and Contemporary Indian
art in 2010 called Goddess, Lion, Peasant,
Priest.
S: That happened in the last six years.
D: I started buying from Navin. We used
to spend much more time together. I think
he gave me my education on Indian and
Tibetan art. And you can’t put it in words.
It’s the heart connection.
When you go out at night, see the moon
in the sky and the clouds passing by, you
just feel it. It’s an emotional experience.
And so really in some ways it doesn’t matter if you know who the artist is. In Tibetan
art you actually do not know who the artist
is. There are no signatures.
S: We didn’t know in the beginning that
(Francis Newton) Souza or (Maqbool
Fida) Husain were important artists. But
we learned.
Which are your favorite pieces that you
collect?
S: It changes. We have this Biren De

(Untitled: Red: Two White Figures in Black
Dot, 1969) hanging in our apartment (she
points to a painting in the Goddess, Lion,
Peasant, Priest catalogue). In our house on
Fire Island (Long Island) we have lots of
Seema Kohli works. She has this strong
feminine energy rising. I personally like her
work.
Many of these modern artists — like
Husain and Souza are not alive. Are you
looking at more contemporary artists like
Seema Kohli then?
S: We look at them as they come past us.
We don’t seek them. I like to buy art that I
can live with. So to buy art to put in storage
is not my thing. When I see something I
love, I think about where I am going to
hang it.
D: That’s why we bought the museum (he
laughs).
S: That’s right.
D: In my business office, before I sold my
company, I had nearly 500 works of art.
S: We used to run art tours of our office.
And it was all Tibetan art at that time?
D: Yes, and some Indian. But what I like
about Tibetan art is because it
has the wrathful and the
peaceful part of the human
condition. (He points to a
Buddhist Thangka hanging on
the wall of the conference room
where we were seated).
In all our minds, our dreams,
our fantasies, when we talk to
shrinks, we see this — blood,
people who are beheaded.
Tibetan art really shows the
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Shelley and Donald Rubin
tion. It gives you what’s really going on in the world.
S: What Donald would do at MultiPlan (the PPO health
provider he ran), he would take clients to one of these
Tibetan paintings and he would give them his description.
He would say ‘You see that skull over there? That’s the guy
who didn’t negotiate straight with me.’ (They both laugh)
He really had an idiosyncratic way of looking at the art
and interpreting it in a modern context about the external
and internal human condition.
I also find it fascinating that your foundation has given
money to the Queens Museum and the Bronx Museum of
Art. You chose not to donate money and art to MoMA or the
Met. Did you believe these museums in Manhattan needed
less support than those in the other boroughs?
S: Donald and I are clear that everybody should have art
and culture writ large in their lives and have it accessible so
that it becomes a part of who they are as they grow up and
when they are adults.
What’s happened is that the large museums, which are
wonderful world class institutions, but they suck up most of
the money and they serve very few people in comparison.
There are people everywhere and in the five boroughs of
New York who would never go to MoMA, to the Met or
Guggenheim for all sorts of reasons. But there are so many
wonderful local institutions. We support the Socrates
Sculpture Park in Astoria, Queens. These are places that
people engage with in their neighborhoods.
We are rethinking and redirecting a part of our personal
foundation into exploring how art and social change relate
to each other; what access to art for all actually means; and
how we can partner with other organizations and the City
of New York to increase art’s access.
Just as there are food desserts, there are art desserts. As
there are less and less creative expression being explored in
schools, institutions of all sorts have to pick up the slack. If
they engage with the community then we need to support
them.
Have you thought of taking your art to India?
D: If one of the major museums wanted to do a show
with our art, we would be happy to take it there. All they
have to do is to provide transportation and insurance. We
don’t charge anything. We would be delighted.
S: But we are not actively seeking that now.
D: I went to Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. And I have
shown my art there. The Modern and Contemporary
Indian art show was first held there in 2010. We have the
Cuba Libre show on at the Bronx Museum of the Art.
S: The reason why we support Queens Museum is
because there is so much ethnic diversity in that borough.
The museum became a community activist, they hired a
community organizer and sought ways to engage with the
various communities.
Do you remember any piece that you may not have been
able to buy for any reason? Do you have any regrets?
D: It happens all the time. I have regrets for a few minutes, maybe overnight, but then I move on.
S: I sometimes look at catalogues of shows and I realize I
miss things we gave to the museum. Is there a specific
thing? No, but when I see the piece hanging in the museum
I might miss it.
But the Rubin Museum is also like your child, no?
S: Yes, but it is not the same thing as having a painting
hanging in my dining room or my bedroom.
Oh, actually I do have a favorite piece. I have a bronze
sculpture at home – a Tibetan Yama, that I jumped up and
down and demanded that we do not give to the museum.

Above, the 17th Karmapa stopped at the Rubin Museum
of Art in April. The museum is popular among spiritual
leaders as well as political leaders like former
President Jimmy Carter, pictured left with the Rubins,
and President Barack Obama, and singers like Ricky
Martin, pictured below.
PHOTOGRAPHS: ARMEN ELLIOTT, LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS and COURTESY: THE
RUBINS

It’s the God of Death. That piece of sculpture has been
with us for many, many years. It lived on our mantle in
our previous home. That sculpture did something to me.
It is remarkable that you have brought so much interest
in South Asian and Tibetan art to New York City. I know
the Asia Society runs such programs sometimes, but no
other museum here has run a Modern and Contemporary
India exhibition.
S: When we started the Rubin Museum there was virtually no interest in Asia. It seems extraordinary because it’s
not that long ago. We bought the property (the old Barney’s
building) in 1998. We were looking for a space before that
and, of course, we were collecting much earlier than that,
and everyone thought we were slightly off.
D: They thought we were crazy.
S: But we felt somehow that Asia was rising. If you
opened your eyes a little bit you could see that Asia, especially India and China, were rising powers of the world and
their art was not seen at all, even though it was incredibly

beautiful, well crafted and meaningful. And that the perspective of looking at this art from the Western eye that was
going to change.
We felt and maybe we helped it a little bit.
You surely did. As much as you have gone to the outer boroughs, but still to situate a museum in the heart of Chelsea is
a major endeavor.
D: And when we got the space, this was one of the most
decrepit, rundown in New York City. And now in the real
estate perspective it is one of the most fast growing parts of
the city.
S: We were definitely an anchor in making it happen. n

ooking back at the winners of the India
Abroad Friend of India Award, you see names
from two important fields. There are diplomats/US government officials like Strobe
Talbott and Marshall Bouton, who shaped America’s
policy ties to India; and there are scholars like Susanne
and Lloyd Rudolph, and Sheldon Pollock who have
made the study of India their lives’ work.
This year’s winners are not government officials nor
are they professors who have studied India their entire
lives. But together, they’ve done so much to help Americans understand India, its culture and its people.
I got to know Shelley and Donald Rubin when they
launched what I call their ‘$100 million love letter to
the Indian subcontinent,’ the Rubin Museum of Art
in downtown Manhattan.
In a country where Indian culture was hard to find
except by visiting Hindu temples or parts of certain
big museums, here was someone building an entire
museum of Himalayan art. They took the famous
Barneys department store spiral staircase and
reimagined it as the heart of a beautiful temple of art
inspired by Buddhist tradition.
It’s always been inspiring to hear how these two
New Yorkers stumbled into this grand love for art and
all things South Asian. A purchase of that first
thanka when they could hardly afford anything else,
blossomed into a gem at the heart of the city, a showcase of our culture and traditions.
From my very first conversation, I knew these were
folks who were different from other Indophiles I’d meet in
New York. They didn’t come to their love of India and its
neighbors by profession — or by the occasional Indian
meal — but by what Donald calls ‘a heart connection’.
Their love of India and South Asian art is palpable, genuine and contagious.
They have done so much to showcase the region in their
museum, including putting on the first major shows about
Sikh and Jain art in New York City; hosting intellectual
discussions and great, fun parties; offering Indians and
others a gathering space and a place to call our own.
It’s not just at the museum that you see their love of
India, it’s also in their home, where masterpiece after
masterpiece by legendary Indian artists line the walls.
In my role at the Met, I spend a lot of time thinking
about digital collections of art and how best to share the
treasures of the Met with the world. Fact is that Shelley
and Donald have been thinking about that — and doing
those kind of projects long before many others. Watching
them build online versions of their Himalayan art collection and how they nurtured the connection with their
physical museum has played an important role in my own
day-to-day work at the Met and also in my decision to
enter in to the arts world.
But it isn’t just being tremendous patrons of the arts
that makes them worthy of the title ‘Friend of India.’ It’s
that they have imbued their lives with Buddhist and
Hindu ideals, manners and traditions. They have also
helped countless good causes in their quest for social justice and making the world a better place.
Among the many things to admire about the Rubins is
that they have, to use a common phrase, ‘put their money
where their mouths are.’ They have invested in start-ups
in the region, they support social causes, they support
museums here and in the region that are working to keep

The Rubins,
authors
of a $100
million love
letter to India
our history alive.
In all this, they have consciously created self-sustaining
initiatives and institutions — theirs is an impact that will
be felt for generations.
This is the legacy we acknowledge with the India
Abroad award. On behalf of all Indians — wherever they
may be — thank you, Donald and Shelley. Thank you. n
Sreenath Sreenivasan is the Chief Digital Officer,
Metropolitan Museum of Art and
co-founder of the South Asian Journalists Association.

Donald Rubin with lamas. Below, Shelley Rubin
enjoys the Indian festival of Holi.
They didn’t come to their love of India and its
neighbors by profession — or by the occasional Indian meal — but by what Donald calls ‘a
heart connection’.
COURTESY: THE RUBINS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M108

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

A sanctuary
of peace
‘I walked out of the museum feeling a deep sense
of calmness within me. That is what the Rubin
Museum does to its visitors. I cannot think of a
more invigorating arts space in all of the city,’ says
Aseem Chhabra.

S

unday afternoon was a perfect day
to explore the Rubin Museum of
Art. There was rain and a thunderstorm threatening to hit the
city in a big way, and I needed a
shelter over my head. The fact that I
could also experience the serenity of
Buddhist art in a quiet space was an
added benefit.
I have been to the RMA many times
since it opened in October 2004 — for
events hosted by local community
organizations, including the South
Asian Journalists Association and the
Indo American Arts Council. I have
been there for film screenings in the
museum’s lovely basement auditorium
space and even introduced some classic Indian movies. I have eaten in the
museum’s café, and explored its bookstore.
The art scene in New York City is cluttered with galleries and there are
dozens of museums, but the RMA stands
apart. One can never get enough of the
RMA, and honestly I cannot think of a
more invigorating arts space in all of city.
In the center of the RMA is the six-story
spiral staircase, part of the original Barneys
clothing store building that stood there
before the museum was built. The building
was bought for reportedly $22 million by
the founders of the RMA — Shelley and
Donald Rubin — and converted into a
museum to house their collection of
Buddhist art from Tibet and other regions
of South Asia, including India.
The Rubins and their architects decided
to keep the spiral staircase in the center of
the new museum.
On that Sunday I took the elevator to the
sixth floor — the top floor of the museum. I
prefer walking down the staircase, checking
out the artwork on display, floor by floor.
Currently the top floor has an amazing
exhibition exploring masks from the

Himalayan region — Tibet, Bhutan,
Nepal, India, and even China and Japan.
It is a stunning show — aptly titled
Becoming Another: The Power of Masks
and it emphasizes the fact that over cen-

The Rubin Museum of Art speaks to the young and the old.
PHOTOGRAPHS: FACEBOOK.COM/RUBINMUSEUM

turies masks have given humans the ability
to hide their true self and at least temporarily become something else — the embodiment of a god, deity, devil, another human,
animal or bird.
I spent a long time staring at these gorgeous pieces — some from the museum’s
own collection, and the rest on loan from
private collectors and other arts institutions. It is a terrific show, that will bring joy
to all — especially children and teenagers.
I walked one floor below and saw one
more of the special exhibits of the season —
Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of
Kashmir and its Legacies. The show is a
surprise, especially for those who learn
about the Kashmir from the current headlines — a land torn by decades-old rivalry
between India and Pakistan, terrorism and
Hindu-Muslim strife.
The RMA show gives a totally different
perspective of Kashmir — a land that has a

deep Buddhist heritage. Few would know
that Kashmir had a thriving culture of art
and literature, and that traveling artists
from other parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially those who practice
Buddhism found patrons who encouraged
them to explore their art in the region.
The current show displays a rich array of
Buddhist sculpture, paintings that may
have similarities with works found in Tibet,
but were developed and produced in
Kashmir.
The floors below house a part of the
museum’s permanent collection.
Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection showcases the exceptional quality and diversity
of art from the Himalayan region. It is the
reason why the RMA was opened in the
first place — the museum’s founders felt
they had to share their large personal collection with other New Yorkers and those
visiting the city.

Then as I walked down the spiral staircase, I made a stop at my personal favorite
section of the museum — a quiet corner
called The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room.
This space is supposed to replicate
Buddhist shrines one sees all over Asia. But
its peaceful ambience is a reminder that
while the museum itself is a shrine to art,
this small area can be treated as a place of
worship as well.
I am not religious, but I found it most
rewarding to sit on the floor for about half
an hour looking at the numerous objects,
with dim lights and flickering lamps. At
times my mind wandered. At other times I
felt I was in a meditative state. And then I
also briefly checked my iPhone for messages. But it felt good.
A short while later, I walked out of the
museum feeling a deep sense of calm within me. That is what the Rubin Museum
does to its visitors. n

M109

India Abroad June 19, 2015

Retirement Home In India

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The only way your parents should retire is
To Retire in Style â&#x20AC;?

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
In the center of the Rubin Museum of Art is the
six-story spiral staircase, part of the original Barneys
clothing store building that stood there before the
museum was built.

The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room is a shrine to the art and the faith.
PHOTOGRAPHS: FACEBOOK.COM/RUBINMUSEUM and RAJESH KARKERA

A sanctuary of peace

The current show displays a rich array
of Buddhist sculptures and paintings.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M111

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

Snapshots from different floors of the Rubin
Museum of Art, ranging from its permanent
collection, Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection,
to a temporary one on masks.
PHOTOGRAPHS: RAJESH KARKERA and FACEBOOK.COM/RUBINMUSEUM

A sanctuary of peace

Presented by

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘They are
Indophiles
in a big
way’
Ravi Akhoury
Friend and art collector

T

he Rubins’ passion for Tibetan and
Indian art is unmatched. You are not
going to find a most passionate collector as them.
They started off with Tibetan Buddhist art.
They built an amazing collection. Then, even
before contemporary Indian art, Don got into
Cuban art. I think at this point he is the
The Rubins against the backdrop of the Himalayas.
biggest collector of Cuban art anywhere. I
don’t know if anybody has as big a collection as COURTESY: THE RUBINS
his.
Then he and Shelley also got into contemporary Tibet art.
And then they have Indian contemporary art, which by itself is
a phenomenal collection. I don’t know how many pieces they
have, but it’s a very large collection.
The Rubins, besides their passion for art collection, are just
wonderful human beings. They do so much for the communities. They are very progressive liberal thinkers supporting all
kinds of forward looking causes. And they donate not just to
museums, but also to human rights causes and all kinds of
other non-profits.
Navin Kumar,
I don’t know what triggered the Tibetan art passion because
Friend and art dealer
that was before my time, before I met them. From what I
understand Don and Shelley, if they like something they
he Rubins’ art collection is a
become passionate about it and they collect it. What they tell
world-class collection comme was that they were walking by a gallery, before they had a
parable to any major muselot of money, and they saw some Tibetan art and said ‘Hey this
um or collection. And yet, they colis something we can enjoy.’
lected the art on their own without
So they started buying slowly. As their finances improved,
any curators or advice from anythey became major and serious collectors. I think Cuban art
one. Once the museum was foundwas again basically because of Don having a good eye. He just
ed, the collection became more
discovered that this was an area where there were some woncomprehensive and representative.
derful artists, they did fine work and they needed support.
Theirs is the largest collection
The Indian art was just a follow through of the Tibetan art.
dedicated to Buddhist and Tibetan
It just flowed. They are Indophiles in a big way. They have
art. They have also built a worldbeen to India many times. They enjoy the art, they love it and
class collection of Indian modern
they started buying it.
art.
And they believe in sharing and promoting — not promoting
They had it in them. Somewhere,
themselves, but promoting the art. They don’t need to promote
and somehow, they were born with
themselves since they are well known in the communities.
an intuitive understanding of
I have known them for a long time. Besides being on the
Tibetan art and philosophy. Once
board of the Rubin Museum of Art, we are also good friends,
they were exposed to the art, they
because I think they are wonderful human beings. n
instantly fell in love with it.
For example, Dante Alighieri’s
Ravi Akhoury is a member of the board of trustees of the
Inferno deeply resonated with
Rubin Museum of Art, in addition to serving on the boards of
them, and they were interested in
several other organizations, including the American India
the works of Carl Jung and psyFoundation. He has been in the investment management busichology more broadly. Thus, they
ness since 1973.
found similar resonance in the
He spoke to Aseem Chhabra.
Tibetan portrayal of wrathful

‘They have done a tremendous
service to humanity’

T

deities and of Bardo Art.
They also were interested in philosophy and metaphysics in a
broader sense, so the idea of universal karmic order appealed to
them in a highly chaotic world.
Establishing the museum was a
way for them to share some of
their personal connection with the
art and philosophy of the
Himalayas.
The moment we met, we instantly became friends. We spent a lot
of time together discussing art,
life, and philosophy, and traveled
together to India and Nepal.
Over the years, we have looked at
a tremendous amount of art
together. They had an incredible
appetite to learn and acquire
knowledge about the works. What
I respected so much was that they
had an incredible eye for art, and
trusted their judgment.
They have done a tremendous
service to humanity by sharing a
rich cultural tradition with the
people of New York and of the
world. The museum is iconic and
now acts as a beacon for

Buddhism around the globe, and
because of the emphasis on education, it could be comparable to
Nalanda University.
They founded the museum, they
bought the building, they donated
their collection, provided it a lifetime endowment, and created a
vibrant ecosystem. In addition to
educational programs, the museum has published major books
with new scholarship, invites
scholars from many disciples for
lectures, and holds theater and
music programs. n
Navin Kumar runs the Navin
Kumar Gallery on the Upper East
Side of Manhattan.
Many years ago, he became
acquainted with Shelley and
Donald Rubin, because they were
in the market looking to buy works
of art. That relationship transformed
into a strong friendship. The Rubins
consider Kumar to be their guide to
the world of Tibetan, Buddhist and
Indian art.
Aseem Chhabra interviewed
him via e-mail.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M113

INNOVATOR.
ENTREPRENEUR.
PRODIGY.
‘I’m a normal guy at the end of the day, doing the things that
everyone loves to do. I want to be an engineer or a surgeon.
Inventing is just a hobby. This company will go forward and
definitely will go on helping people.’
Shubham Banerjee, 13, winner of the India Abroad Special Award
for Achievement, speaks to P Rajendran about his revolutionary
Braille printer that has made him one of the world’s youngest
entrepreneurs and will be a blessing for the blind.

Presented by

SHUBHAM
BANERJEE

INDIA ABROAD
SPECIAL AWARD
FOR ACHIEVEMENT
2014
For his noble invention; for his
commitment to the blind; for
wowing us all with his ideas.

COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M114

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
India Abroad Special
Award for Achievement

KAMALJEET SINGH KALSI (2011)
The first turbaned Sikh to serve in the
US Army in almost 30 years and a
recipient of the Bronze Star
PRATIMA DHARM (2011)
The First Hindu Chaplain of the US
Army
SUKANYA ROY (2011)
Scripps National Spelling Bee winner
Shubham Banerjee has caught the world’s attention with his innovation.
COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

S

hubham Banerjee was just 12 and playing with
the Lego Mindstorms platform when he realized
that Braille printers cost between $1,400 and
around $7,000. He also discovered that about 285
million blind people — 90 percent of them in the
developing world — relied on these ungainly and expensive
printers.
So, the pre-teen came up with a model that should finally
cost just $350. The idea was to take standard material and
print it out in Braille for offline reading.
Now 13, Shubham has set up Braigo Labs, with his mother Malini as the president and chief executive officer (since
he is too young to hold the post himself — or to drink or
drive, as the entrepreneur-inventor points out).
Life for Shubham changed completely after he started
Braigo and the interest it elicited was immense. He granted
media interviews on the way back from school and was
probably the youngest entrepreneur to get seed funding
from Intel Capital.
The Braigo story began in December 2012 when he saw a
flyer in his home from an organization that worked with
blind people. This set him wondering how those who were
visually impaired read or wrote and was shocked to know
that Braille printers cost over $ 2000.
After some searching on Google, he wanted to build a
Braille printer for his school fair and asked his father to buy
home a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit.
It took him three weeks to build the first prototype.
Initially working with $35,000 given to him by his parents,
the funding from Intel gave him the much desired boost
and helped him expand.
He is presently working with Microsoft to integrate it
with Windows to make it easily accessible to the visuallyimpaired and plans to launch it commercially in November.

INNOVATOR.
ENTREPRENEUR.
PRODIGY.
Shubham juggles school work with his day job, having
now moved to the Archbishop Mitty High School in San
Diego, while also working through various models of his
printer, having tested new versions on the Arduino chip,
then Intel’s new Edison, and now on the next generation of
the printer based on the Windows operating system.
After deciding that his science exhibit was more than just
a project but the basis for a viable company, Shubham got it
vetted by Henry Wedler, one of his corporate advisers who
is also a graduate student at the University of California,
Davis and a winner of the President’s Champions of Change
award for promoting science, technology, engineering and
math for the disabled. Since Wedler is both blind and a
researcher, he could assess it from both viewpoints — and
he was impressed.
In a recorded demonstration video, Wedler also pointed
out that this invention makes it easier for people who can
see to share information with people who cannot. He also
suggested ways to improve the design to better suit the
needs of the blind.

When Shubham first developed the idea, schoolmates at
the science exhibition were his first audience.
The printer improved over repeated iterations, with the
input device going from a series of buttons to a Microsoft
Surface Pro now.
The early models were clever and broke new ground, but
the more recent ones will come to the market after Braigo
Labs goes past what Shubham describes as the
seed phase to the company’s growth phase.
Edward Ross, director of Inventor Platforms
at Intel, which is backing his project,
told Associated Press that Shubham is ‘solving a
real problem, and he wants to go off and disrupt an existing industry. And that’s really what
it’s all about.’
Shubham relies on his father Niloy (Neil), a
director at Braigo Labs who also works at Intel,
for advice and help, but he has honed his skills
4M115
since his first efforts working with Lego
Mindstorm, having over time plunged into the

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M114
Shubham Banerjee
innards of a variety of printers, learned 3-D
modeling and coding to come up with a
new version, which promises even better
functionality.
He also speaks vaguely of yet-secret plans
to upgrade the interface substantially to do
more than just print Braille.
The code and design for Braigo v1.0 will
be open source, though — and the instructions were put up on makezine.com
Among other honors, Shubham has won
the US News 2015 Next Generation of
STEM Leaders, Popular Science’s 2015
Invention Award, Open Silicon Valley’s
2014 Youth Innovator Award, the 2014
White House Maker Faire Choice Ribbon,
and figured in Silicon Valley’s Business
Journal’s ‘40 under 40’ and Reader’s
Digest’s Best of America lists.
After attending a Microsoft Student Tech
Fair in New York last month, the company
announced that work was on to incorporate
Braigo drivers into the next iteration of its
operating system, Windows 10.
In the Microsoft statement, Shubham was
quoted as saying that it would be particularly useful for the blind, particularly
because Windows is used in banks, government institutions and libraries.
Born in Hasselt, Belgium, Shubham, then
4, came with his family to San Jose, and
then to Santa Clara.
In a conversation with India Abroad,
Shubham describes the story behind his
revolutionary printer — and what makes
him tick
Were you always interested in science?
I’m really a science guy. I love science,
whether it’s biology, chemistry, physics.
They’re really interesting.
Math?
Yeah, I like math a lot. Sometimes it can
get a bit boring… but I guess it’s really useful. Geometry’s pretty fun but not the
proofs. Algebra, yeah, it’s okay. Biology, I
like the systems in the body, particularly the
neural system.
What about reading?
I read when I get the chance to. I’ve been
a little busy. I like adventure, fantasy, biographies. Recently, I read a biography
(American Sniper) on Chris Kyle.
Sports?
I follow the San Francisco 49ers. I play
either quarterback or wide receiver. My
friends and I play just for fun.
What influence has your family had on
your work?
They always taught me to do good to
other people and be a good human being.
That’s where my curiosity came in.
We talk about world problems and what’s
happening. They’re always influencing me
to do well — well, not only me, but my sister (Anoushka) also.
When you were 12 you learned blind peo-

decided) to form a
company. People wanted to help and we
said, why not? We can form a company
and we can start selling these (printers).
Tell us about the process involved in
setting it up.
Me and my dad got some inkjet printers and broke them apart. I looked
inside. I saw the mechanism — the head
moving, the ink cartridges.
I was working with the Arduino (chip)
and then decided not to take Arduino.
Intel also wanted me to work with them
with their new chip called Edison. So we
went to their headquarters and we
worked with a bunch of people. They
helped us get the main prototype working.
Who are the other people who helped
you?
We also worked at TechShop. That’s
where I learned 3-D modeling with
Shubham Banerjee was just 12, below right, and playing with the Lego Mindstorms
Autodesk. It’s actually fun.
platform when he ended up building the first Braigo model. He has since come a long
Why’d you have to learn 3-D modelway, appearing on programs like the Queen Latifah Show, above, or just hanging out with ing?
the Science Guy aka Bill Nye, below right.
That’s basically to get the head design
COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE
so we can put in the motors needed to
make it work.
What were the challenges in working
on Braigo v2.0?
Since we were working with a new
chip, a lot of bugs were there. It wasn’t
really powered – or we can use so much
power we can blow the chip. It worked
in the end.
Are you still using pins in the printer?
We’re using motors and we’re not
completely piercing the paper. It’s like a
blunt pin to deform the paper.
Are you still using one pin here?
That’s two, actually. It will make it
faster.
So why not have six? Or 10?
That’s what we’re working on. This is
just a prototype so once (we’re) in the final
mechanism and modified that using one
ple could read using Braille. How did your
one, definitely, yeah.
pin in Braigo v1.
printer come about?
Since Braille has six dots, having six
What is the input for you to start convertI’ve been playing with blocks since I was
motors will be a lot faster.
ing text into Braille?
two, and with Lego since I was five. I
We use the Surface Pro. We can type in
You’d choose letters — going up and
thought Lego would be great, ‘cause chilwhatever we want inside the interface, and
down… select the letters you want and
dren love to play with it — it’s very low-cost
you can click ‘Enter’ and it will start printthey’d automatically start printing.
and it’s available everywhere.
ing automatically.
But that is cumbersome, right?
Mindstorms is not quite a set of Lego
So you can even scan pdfs and whole
Yes, that is very cumbersome for a blind
blocks, right?
books and print it out?
person. That’s where Braigo v2.0 comes in.
Yeah, it’s a robotics kit. I played around
Braigo Labs worked on that and we found
What did your friends and teachers say
for a while and got the hang of it. I hacked
a free way of doing that.
about Braigo v1?
a banner printer that would print out letIs there a possibility of a Braille-based
My teachers came and they didn’t expect
ters and hacked that a whole bunch to
screen or something like that?
this out of me. They asked, ‘What? How did
make a Braille printer.
We have actually thought of that….
you build that?’ Even the principal came.
What did you do that changed letters into
What are the other things that interest
All my friends were like, ‘That’s awesome.
essentially six dots?
you?
Can I try that?’ They were really amazed.
I made a specific (printer) head for it, and
I’m a normal guy at the end of the day,
Then we moved on to Synopsis (Outreach
connected it to the motors. I had to do the
doing the things that everyone loves to do
Foundation) a bigger science fair, where
code myself. I was working with the Lego
— like playing video games, hanging out
you could actually place and get prizes. A
language — the drag-and-drop. I guess it
with friends, studying…
ton of judges came and checked out my
took me some time to get the right model. I
What are your future plans?
project, and I actually got the first prize
built a lot of models.
I want to be an engineer or a surgeon.
($500) for the n+1 (level).
What do you start changing to make such
Inventing is just a hobby. This company
When did you and your family decide to
a printer work?
will go forward and definitely will go on
start a company?
I know that if it can print it can make
helping people. n
Well, I guess, after I built Braigo v2.0, (we
holes as well. So I took apart that whole

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M116

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

The life of a teenage entrepreneur

Shubham Banerjee was probably the youngest entrepreneur to get seed funding from Intel Capital.
The announcement catapulted him into the corporate world.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

Shubham at the Microsoft Student Tech Fair in New York City.
He is now working with the Windows team at Microsoft to integrate
Braigo drivers with Windows for easy deployment.“Our relationship
with Microsoft will help Braigo achieve a seamless experience for a
visually impaired person who wants to use a computer at home or
at the office to print documents for offline reading,” Shubham said.
“Also, think about the banks, the government institutions or even the
libraries where Windows-based computers are widely used. They
will all benefit from having a Braigo to provide accessibility services to their visually impaired customers.”
People at Windows were excited to see where this 13 year old
would take them ‘by the time he graduates high school!’

It wasn’t surprising to see Lego Group
President Soren Torp Laursen with
Shubham at the White House Maker Faire
last year. Just a few months before that Lego
made a public post about how Shubham
had inspired them: ‘Inspired by Shubham
Banerjee’s Braigo printer, we’re hosting the
LEGO MINDSTORMS “Build 4 Good”
competition... at Seattle’s EMP Museum,
featuring some of Seattle’s most innovative
companies including +Amazon.com,
+Expedia, +HTC, +Nordstrom, Xbox, &
+zulily.’

India Abroad June 19, 2015

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Just another Shubham kind of
day: Johan C Verbeke, left, the Belgian
ambassador to the United States, and
his team spend time with the
Belgium-born teen innovator
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

The life of a teenage
entrepreneur

Shubham with Dr Simon J Clemett, a researcher
from the NASA Johnson Space Center at
‘The workshop: Exploring science through your
senses’ event in Cupertino, California. The event
included a Braigo building workshop.

But when life is a roller coaster
of ‘full time school+exams+TV
interviews+travel+Braigo
Demo+...’ a boy needs some
R&R once in a while.

Above, Shubham uses the weekends
for experimentation...
That’s if he is not traveling, below.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M119

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He is a shy
and reserved
person with
a sense of
humor’

‘Even
though, he
gets tired,
he never
shows it’

Malini Banerjee
Mother

is very first science fair he participated in was in the 4th
grade — the topic was ‘Playing
video games increases your
hand and eye coordination.’ He selected
that topic because we would tell him that
video games are not good for anyone :-)
That was his idea to scientifically try and
prove us wrong and we went along with it.
He participated a lot in debate competitions on behalf of his school. Many experienced debaters like him do not wish to
pair up with newcomers (since that weakens the team). In the very last debate competition before he finished middle school,
he decided to take a first-time debater
who was in the seventh grade on his team.
He told the teacher he is fine to pair up
with a newcomer since everybody needed
a break and the opportunity. He lost the
debate, but he was not sad. When he came
home he said that someone needed to give
a new person the opportunity to participate even if it means not winning the
competition.
This is an example of him thinking
about others.
Shubham has a lot of media obligations,
especially to do news channel videos and
interviews. Sometimes, if it’s a documentary, a shoot can go on for the whole day.
Even though, he gets tired, he never shows
it and finishes the work.
That’s an example of his commitment
and willingness to follow through. He
shows the same commitment when he is
traveling to other cities, sometimes taking
a red-eye flight and showcasing his invention the whole day, and then taking a
flight back.
If you see the volume of media interviews he has given in the past year, you
can imagine what he is capable of handling at such a young age.
These are some of the things about
Shubham that not many people understand — what a person has to go through,
especially when he’s just 13. n

Niloy ‘Neil’ Banerjee
Father, coach and mentor

H

S

hubham was born in Hasselt,
Belgium. While my husband went
to work I was a stay-at-home
mom. We moved to the US when
Shubham was four years old. We
spend a lot of quality time together.
Shubham has shown a lot of compassion
since he was a child. He felt sad to see
children on the streets in India when we
went for vacation every year. Once I
remember he gave his jacket away to a
child on the street, when he was three
years old.
At home he used to play around a lot
with kitchen utensils, especially with the
pressure cooker, which he found very
interesting to put the lid on and find the
right angle to do it and take it off again.
He used to do that a lot.
As his fingers and building skills developed we bought him Lego blocks to
improve his creative skills. He started
making weird stuff after watching something on TV. He never followed any
instructions given on leaflets that came in
the Lego sets. He would always give away
his creations to anybody who came at
home for a visit. Probably those were the
first signs of him being both compassionate and also creative in his own way.
When he started to go to elementary
school in Santa Clara all his elementary
school teachers said he is a very nice and
compassionate person, with nice behavior.
All the younger kids in the community
gravitated towards him and wanted to play
with him.
He exhibits that affectionate nature,
especially with younger kids. That’s another sign about his ability to go to a level
where he is able to make friends at all levels. He is a shy and reserved person with a
sense of humor.
At Braigo Labs he keeps all of us
grounded, where he questions some
actions of the team or where we deviate
from the original idea of keeping costs low.
He is still a 13 year old, and doesn’t know
that much about business deals and how it

works. So we have a team of experienced
individuals to guide him.
He is non-intrusive and knows what he
wants – so all of us are moving together
towards that vision. He had a couple of
discussions with some investors. And what
I heard from his dad is he started his presentation saying that - ‘Whether you give
me money or not, the product will be

launched.’ This shows his confidence.
Also, what I hear from others a lot
— including from reporters and producers of TV shows — is that he is
very humble. He is not egotistical, nor
does he engage in bad behavior.
Also, in school he avoids discussions
about what he is doing with Braigo. He
tells me he wants to have a normal life
and does not want to create a perception that he is better than anyone.
When his friends asks him about any
news article that comes out, he brushes
it off saying that it’s not a big deal.
He is not a brilliant straight A student. In other words – he is not bookish. As a teenager he has those days that
every parent faces :-) but he has been persistent with what he wants to do. He has a
flexible temperament. n
Malini Banerjee is President and Chief
Executive Officer, Braigo Labs, the company
her son Shubham Banerjee founded.
She spoke to P Rajendran.

Niloy ‘Neil’ Banerjee is Director of
Integration and Validation at Intel
Education division.
He spoke to P Rajendran.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M120

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘He has touched
so many lives
at such an early
stage’

‘Inventors have been
attempting what he has
done for many years’
Henry Wedler
PhD student and advisor to
Braigo

W
Shubham Banerjee with his grandparents.
COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

Mriganka Sekhar Banerjee
Paternal grandfather

W

e are happy that Shubham has been able to
touch so many lives at such an early age. Since
we live in India and Shubham is away from us,
we, as grandparents, miss both Shubham and
Anoushka (our granddaughter) every day.
As they are growing up, due to so many engagements, it is difficult for them to come and visit us in India often. The sudden
news in the local newspaper and on television (about
Shubham) was a very good surprise for us. All our neighbors
come to us whenever there is a new break and give us those
paper articles. It’s such a proud moment for us.
My father Sanat Kumar Banerjee was head of department of
chemistry at Ashutosh College in Calcutta University. He worked
closely with world renowned Professor P C Roy. My brother, who
died young due to a laboratory accident, was also involved in
research on benzene; while my son (Shubham’s dad) is into electronics engineering.
We are very happy that Shubham is continuing on a somewhat
similar path of research and engineering. We don’t know what
he will finally choose as his profession when he grows up. But he
has started showing engineering creativity.
When we were growing up, during our time we never had such
a speed of technological development that the Internet has
brought to all of us. Our world has become a smaller place and
with that has brought information at our home.
We are currently visiting Shubham here in the US
and were pleasantly surprised to see how he is handling the
media and having discussions about Braigo Labs. He seems to
have suddenly matured beyond his age (in a good way). n
Mriganka Sekhar Banerjee is a civil and structural engineer.

hen I first heard
about Shubham
Banerjee and the
Braigo Braille printer through the vast media publicity he received, I thought I’d take a
‘shot in the dark’ and contact him
via e-mail.
I didn’t expect to hear back
from Shubham and figured I
wouldn’t be able to get to know
him as a person. Much to my surprise, I received an e-mail in my
inbox 30 minutes after I e-mailed
him.
Shubham’s e-mail said, ‘My parents told me that I should take a
break from e-mail and work over
spring break, but your e-mail and
my Braigo project are just too

exciting and I couldn’t help but
respond.’
With this, Shubham and I were
in close contact over e-mail.
Shubham surprised me again
about two weeks later when he
contacted me and asked if he
could come with his dad and visit
me in my laboratory in Davis.
He and his dad came on a
Sunday morning with the Braigo
Lego Braille printer and demonstrated it to me. What I witnessed
was a state-of-the-art, inexpensive, and perhaps most importantly a unique Braille printer
which produced accurate Braille
characters. I was immediately
amazed and impressed by
Shubham.
What makes Shubham so wonderful as a person and an inventor
is that he does amazing things
without realizing the global

impact to the world of his contribution. Inventors have been
attempting to do what Shubham
has done with Braille embossers
for many years and have not come
up with nearly the product that
Shubham has developed.
Sometimes it takes a young
fresh imagination and a will of
iron to be truly innovative and
this is the energy and quality that
Shubham’s knowledge and passion as an inventor bring to
Silicon Valley.
I feel extremely lucky to have
been able to get to know Shubham and to have him consider me a
mentor and advisor. He innovated
an extraordinarily impressive
product and I have had the pleasure as a blind person to advise
Shubham on what blind and visually impaired Braille readers want
and need in Braille printers.
We work together
with sincere synergy and it is humbling to serve on
his highly-coveted
team of advisors. n
Henry Wedler
is a PhD student at
the University of
California, Davis.
He has been honored by President
Barack Obama as a
Champion of
Change for leading
education and
employment efforts
in science, technology, engineering
and math for
Americans with
disabilities.
He is an advisor to
Braigo Labs.

Shubham Banerjee
and Henry Wedler.
COURTESY: NEIL BANERJEE

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M121

Presented by

AKHIL

REKULAPELLI

INDIA ABROAD
SPECIAL
AWARD FOR
ACHIEVEMENT
2014
For his skillful navigation
of the atlas; for his calm
confidence; for
conquering the globe.

FOR HIM
IT WAS THE
JOURNEY.
AND IT WAS
ALSO THE WIN
Akhil Rekulapelli is the winner of the
National Geographic Bee 2014.
He can rattle off statistics about sports
teams despite a lack of interest in the actual
sport. He’s a reader. He has a black belt in
Tae Kwon Do. And that’s just the beginning.
Chaya Babu finds out more about the
winner of the India Abroad Special Award
for Achievement.
COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M122

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

W

hen Akhil Rekulapelli
went to the National
Geographic Bee in 2013
and placed fourth, he
nearly gave up on his
dream of victory, which
was noted at the bottom of a to-do list hanging on his bedroom door.
‘Win the national bee,’ it read.
His rank was a real blow, a moment of self
doubt and diffidence that led the then 12 year
old to question his ability to even make it to
the Top 10 again the following year.
And he almost didn’t.
In 2014, nine kids got there with perfect
scores, their names added to the final roster
of contestants with one space left. But Akhil
had to go through a tie-breaker round before
winning his Top 10 spot.
“I told him the order didn’t matter,” said his
father Prasad Rekulapelli. “I said, ‘Okay, flip
the order around. Take the zero away. It doesn’t matter, you made it.’”
In fact, Akhil made it all the way.
In the 26th National Geographic Bee in
2014, the eighth grader from Ashburn,
Virginia, crossed that lingering to-do off his
list. He left Washington, DC with $50,000 in
college scholarship prize money, a lifetime
membership to the National Geographic
Society and a trip for two to the Galápagos
Islands on an expedition aboard the Lindblad
ship National Geographic Endeavour.
The winning question? The discovery of a
major shale oil deposit in the Vaca Muerta
formation in 2010 has led to an expansion of
oil drilling in the Neuquén province in what country?
Answer: Argentina.
Akhil called it with an easy composure that masked the
jittery nerves of a kid on his last shot.
He was, of course, able to name a plethora of other
obscure geographic minutia — and no, not the obvious facts
like country capitals but slightly tougher tidbits like the
approximate diameter of the Earth at the equator.
Ameya Mujumdar, who Akhil was up against at the very
end, knew the exact number: 7,926 miles.
Still Akhil’s years of hard work and, more importantly,
his resilience in the face of failure triumphed. His parents
instilled in him the value of the journey over the result,
and Akhil’s dedication to his path of simply learning geography, a passion that began as early as 18 months when
one of his favorite activities was a United States puzzle,
led to his big win.
In India, Akhil’s grandmother and aunt gave out sweets in
their neighborhood as a way of honoring his accomplishment. At his school, Stone Hills Middle School, hundreds of
kids signed a poster with a blown up photo of him. And at
the county level, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors
recognized him through approving official legislation:
Resolution of Commendation for Akhil Rekulapelli.
According to his mother Swapna Rojanala, the emphasis
in their home was more on character than achievement. As
parents, she and Prasad pushed Akhil toward happiness
through balance and well-roundedness versus narrow metrics of success. In turn, he showed compassion and caring
as a child as well as a precocious sensibility and manner of
communicating his intellectual drive and extensive knowledge on unusual topics.
“He’s a very curious kid,” his father said. “He likes to learn
all the time. He enjoys it whenever he’s learning. Anything.

FOR HIM IT
WAS THE
JOURNEY.
AND IT WAS
ALSO THE WIN
And he’ll go in-depth.”
Akhil can rattle off statistics about sports teams despite
his lack of interest in the actual sport. He’s a reader and a
thinker, but also a good friend. He got his black belt in Tae
Kwon Do and was told by a local politician that his public
speaking abilities position him well for a career in politics.
Akhil already has other plans. With biology as his other
main focus, he is set on a career in medicine. His mother
said she doesn’t see this changing despite the many years
ahead of him, nor do they have an intention of influencing
his desires one way or another.
“He’s the one who plans his future,” his father added. “We
just help lay the path to get there.”
Can you tell me about how winning the bee felt and how
things have been since then?

Akhil Rekulapelli, right, in a lovely moment of
camaraderie during the National Geographic Bee
2014.
COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

It felt like a dream come true, something that I accomplished because I had been working at it for four long years
and I was happy to finally get that far.
When I was in fifth grade, I never even thought of making
it to the Top 10 in the state bee. I never even thought of
winning the state bee. That was something I was almost
sure I was never going to do. So I’m really happy. And geography is something that I learned to love even more.
When I won, it all came at one moment. When you watch
it on TV, right after the person wins, everything just stops.
But I had people swarming me for autographs and interviews, and I had to manage that. In the moment I wasn’t
really thinking about it; I was just kind of in shock.
Then once I got home, I realized how big of a deal this
was. Sometimes when big things like that happen, people
tend to think that you’re not going to spend as much time
with them or something, but it was good that I
got to stay in touch with my friends and also get
to just enjoy the moment.
I guess I got both sides — I got the normal
standpoint, of being able to spend time with my
family friends, and also the general feeling of
having won something important.
So, you had no expectation of winning. You
must have felt really surprised.
Yeah. When I was in seventh grade, my goal
was just to make it to the top 10. But I knew in
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eighth grade that my definite goal was to try to
win it even though when I started, in fifth

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Akhil Rekulapelli
grade, I wasn’t exactly sure how far I could get.
I knew it was a dream of mine and a goal
that I had set in my mind. I was happy that I
was able to accomplish it.
I’m sure. It’s very exciting. Was that winning
question hard for you?
Well, the first time I heard about the shale oil
formation, I wasn’t really sure about the specific formation. But once he said the province, I
recalled it from my time studying and I was
able to answer.
I remember something else as challenging.
When I was in the preliminary round, I was
one of the people who had one wrong, so I had
to go to a tie-breaker round. In that tie-breaker
round, there were about eight people going for
one last spot in the top 10. That was easily the
most stressful moment of my journey because I
had come that far and I didn’t want to falter at
the tie-breaker.
I really wanted to go and win the title, so the
tie-breaker and trying to answer those questions under all that extreme pressure —
because if you get a question wrong then you’re
done — that was the hardest part. It was definitely that stress and trying to keep myself
calm and collected that I remember as a challenge.
What has been the most exciting part of all of
this for you?
The highlight has been meeting all these
notable people and going on live television.
And just accomplishing something that I knew
I had been working on for such a long time.
I finally felt like I had done something huge,
and it was the joy of finally completing something that you have put so much time and
energy and work into, and that after four years,
all your work has culminated into one event
that you’re able to come out on top in.
That was definitely the biggest thing I took
away from it and the thing I enjoyed the most.
Aside from the tie-breaker, what was the toughest part about these competitions?
Between seventh and eighth grade, after I
placed fourth, I wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to
continue with the bee because I had eighth grade
coming up and I felt like I had just didn’t want to
really go through the whole process again.
But I had been thinking about it for a while
and then after letting a little bit of the school year
pass, I realized that it was something that I truly
had a passion for. And I knew I had a chance at
making it all the way to the top.
The passion and the love I had for geography
made it feel like something was missing in my life
when I wasn’t doing it. That period was a big
challenge, but I was able to overcome it. I eventually made the right decision to continue with
geography.
It sounds like you have a deep connection to
geography. How did your interest begin?
When I was around one-and-a-half, I liked
puzzles, and my parents got me a United States
puzzle. I learned the states and the capitals by the
time I was four after just putting the puzzle

From martial arts to soccer, tennis and rowing, Akhil Rekulapelli’s
interests are diverse.
COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

together over and over
again. Then I had a sort of hidden interest in
geography.
For example, if I was reading about cars or
sports, my focus would be like, ‘Oh this team
plays in this city,’ or ‘This car is from this country.’ It was something that was intertwined
with my other interests, and eventually my
interest in geography showed.
Finally in fourth grade, I really wanted to do
the geography bee; I learned at school that
there was such a thing as a geography bee. But
then I realized that that year, there wasn’t a
bee at my school.
The next year, in fifth grade, I won the
school bee, and my parents thought, ‘Oh
there might actually be something here, let’s
see how he does.’
At that point, they still weren’t sure I was
that serious about it; they thought it was
something I was just reading a bit about. Then
I went to the states bee and got six out of eight,
so I missed the tie-breaker for the preliminaries by one. That’s when they started to realize
that I was into geography.
At about the beginning of sixth grade, I
started to take it a little more seriously and
tried to get further in the state bee.
What was your study process like?
If it was a typical weekday, then I would just
go to school and finish my homework. But I’d
finish my work for school as fast as I could and
I really wouldn’t be paying much attention
because I wanted to get to geography. I’d do
that quickly and then I would maybe compile
some facts or study whatever region I wanted
to focus on for the day.
Also the way I studied changed over the
years. In fifth grade I had a really interesting
teacher who enjoyed geography too, and sometimes between classes or even in the middle of
class, I would kind of sneak in a geography
book and read it a little bit, and I read it over
and over again. That was all the information I
got that year.
Then in sixth grade, I still wasn’t very focused
at that point, and I didn’t understand that you
can’t just study for five minutes and then play
for 15 minutes and then come back and study
for another five minutes. I didn’t realize yet that
you don’t get any good out of that.
And unbeknownst to me at that point, I was
kind of arrogant because I thought that I could
easily win the state bee, but I didn’t make it to
the top 10 that year.
In seventh grade I started putting in more
hours and as the state bee approached, I put
even more hours. That’s when I
began doing that thing where I finished my homework quickly so I
could study geography.
By the time nationals came
around, I was studying a little bit at
school, but not a lot. Once I came
home it would be straight to studying and then in the evenings my parents would quiz me.
Sometimes I’d give friends a book
of questions to use to quiz me.
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My sister also did a lot. She took a

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Akhil Rekulapelli
lot of her time out to help me. My teachers too. It was a
community effort, I’d say.
Who was most helpful to you?
My parents and my sister, for devoting a lot of her time.
She always says, ‘I used my whole entire winter break to
quiz you.’
You seem to have learned quite a bit through this whole
process. What did you learn most about yourself?
I learned how to stay cool and collected. I learned how,
whenever you’re in a dire situation, to take it a lot more
calmly, and not be all frantic and rushing. I also learned
about failure — just how to pick myself and keep going.
And I used that a lot as motivation, especially from sixth to
seventh grade.
I feel like that summer after not winning the state bee, I
realized how to use that as motivation and a way to push
forward. I would think in my head, ‘If I want to win the
state bee, I’m going to have to do this.’ (Failing) drove me.
It was a driving force.
Through that hard work and perseverance and never giving up because I learned so much through that first experience of failure in sixth grade, where I was devastated but I
picked myself back up. I used that to put in hard work over
that summer to help me, which, I’m sure, if I hadn’t done, I
wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you in this interview
now.
Also, learning to stick with my passion. Like when I
almost chose to not do it in eighth grade, but then I
realized what my passion was and said, ‘This is
something I actually love,’ I knew I had to try
again.
I feel lucky that I have something I love and
something I can always do that allows me to
embrace other cultures. Even though I’m learning
about something, it’s fun for me. It’s something
that’s really interesting and something that I feel I
can make a difference with by learning about other
cultures and appreciating other places and just
knowing we’re so lucky to live in this country and
to have all the opportunities we have here.
This opportunity has enlightened me. I’ve
learned so much about my own culture too and
about India throughout my time in the geography
bee.
Another thing that’s interesting is that whenever
I’m traveling, I can talk to people from that country
about their home and their customs and how they
live.
Have you traveled to India much?
Maybe three or four times.
What do you take away most from those trips?
I guess mostly being with my family. I love
spending time with my family and seeing how they
live and also the culture and how my dad was brought up
— how different his life was compared to mine but also
how interesting it was and how open it was too. Because
over there, it’s a really open community and there’s just so
many people and you know everybody on your block. You
can just walk down and you know all the stores a few
blocks away.
Living here (Virginia), you always have to get in a car to
go somewhere, but India, everything is close: Not only your
family, but things like stores, temples, and other things.
Where is your family from in India?
Warangal. It’s in north central Telangana.
Is that mainly where you’ve gone on your visits to India?

Akhil Rekulapelli with his sister and cousins in Costa Rica, top. He considers it the most
interesting place he has been to so far.
The geography buff has also been to places like Alaska, above left, and Mexico.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

Yes, Warangal, but also Hyderabad. Sometimes we go to
other places, like once we went to Delhi, Agra, Jaipur,
Udaipur, those areas.
What has been your favorite?
Probably my family’s home because it’s where I can spend
time with them.
But if I think of the most interesting thing that I’ve gotten
to see, even though it sounds kind of a cliché, the Taj

Mahal. I just really like the architecture. We
tend to appreciate just the building where
Shah Jahan put his wife, but I also like to
appreciate the vast gardens surrounding it and
the other structures. I think that’s something
that’s really cool and not appreciated as much
as it should be.
Apart from that, as a geography lover, what is

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Prasad Rekulapelli and Swapna Rojanala
Parents
Swapna: When he was a kid, he would do puzzles and he
was excited about learning. But he’s a kid with many interests. After the puzzles, he moved on to cars, he loved cars.
Prasad: There was a United States puzzle. He was 18
months old and would put it together
Swapna: But his real interest — as far as really getting
into geography — I don’t think we realized until about
fourth grade. That’s when he said, ‘Mom, I want to try out
for this geography competition.’
But the school didn’t have one, and he was very disappointed at the time.
He kept asking his teacher, ‘Are they going to have one,
are they going to have one?’
Then the following year, he was very much set on them
holding one, and (they did) so he went for it. So I would say
maybe when he was about 8 or 9 is when the interest developed more.
The first year, when he wanted to get into it, it was completely new to us. He came home one day and said, ‘Mom,
we’re going to have this competition in the classroom, and
then they’re going to pick the top people to go to the schoolwide level.’
I said, ‘Okay, that’s nice Akhil, should I be there?’
He said, ‘Yes.’
So we went through that whole early process, we watched
the school competition, he won, and I was so happy for
him. Then he had to take a test to make it to the Top 100 in
the state. The school got notified first that he made it to
that 100, which meant he made it to the state competition.
That was very surprising for us, because that was the first
year he had done it and what he learned was from background knowledge. He just had one book to just kind of feel
comfortable, but otherwise everything he had learned up to

‘We didn’t do much.
At any given point, he
knows more than us’
let’s go find somebody who can help. Because I said, ‘Akhil,
I really don’t know geography, so I wouldn’t be a good geography coach for you.’
It’s one of those topics that there are not that many people
out there are teaching or coaching kids on. But I felt that
when there’s a coach for every field out there, why wouldn’t
there be one for geography? I thought there has to be someone out there. So we searched and searched and finally we
found Coach Kumar. And that’s how it all started for us.
I think before that we were a little like, ‘Okay let’s see.’ But
then we realized he was serious about it. He really wanted
it — he wanted to get out there and he wanted to win something for himself. Because all along, I was getting him to try
different things, especially group-related activities. I always
thought team activities were good for him because he’s such
a public person. He’s not a kid who will just sit and study.
He loves to be in groups, and friends are very important to
him. So I was always focused on things that I thought
would be more suitable to his outgoing personality. I had
never really thought about geography until he was in sixth
grade. At least not seriously.
He’s always been a kid in that way — he is into being with
friends. He would come home and do his homework, but
I’d have to say, ‘Akhil, you need to finish your
homework before you go out to play.’ We never
thought anything different about him because he
was just a kid, and we felt that kids need to grow
up but have time to play and enjoy themselves,
because as they grow up they get more responsibility so this was a time for them to just have
fun. I would put him in sports — he played baseball for five seasons and also soccer — and he did
Tae Kwon Do.
Prasad: He got a black belt.
Swapna: We did all the things any normal parent would do. We just emphasized fun and
friendship. Every birthday, it was just friends in
the backyard. The more friends he has, the happier he is.
He’s a very caring person. He’s always cared
about people.
Prasad: We contacted Coach Kumar Nandur
but he wanted to speak to Akhil. He wanted to
see if Akhil was truly interested in geography or
not.
He said, ‘I’m going to ask him five
questions and then I’m going to talk
to him,’ because he wanted to coach
someone who is really passionate
about it. So we set up a meeting (on
the phone) and he asked Akhil questions, and he was surprised at
Akhil’s knowledge for his age and
his experience at that time. He
agreed to coach Akhil, long dis4M127
tance, giving him study topics, and
A recent family portrait of the Rekulapellis. Akhil would do more than what

that point was just background knowledge. This was when
he was in fifth grade.
We didn’t have maps, we didn’t have anything. But he
would just pick a topic and he would learn about the geography of it — he was very interested in cars and sports, so
he would go in-depth about cars, like where they were
made, where their headquarters were.
He would spit out all this information to us. We were like,
‘Wow!’ And we never thought it was anything more than
just something he was into; we didn’t think he was going to
make it to this (competitive) level. We took it as a kid thing.
Then when he made it to the state competition, we were
even more surprised.
Prasad: At the state bee, out of these 100 kids, they have
to eliminate 90 kids to get to the Top 10. So what they do is
they ask eight questions and he missed two so he didn’t
make that cut that year, in the fifth grade. Then in sixth
grade, he studied kind of the same way, and we weren’t that
involved, but he won the school level again and went to
states, and he got seven questions right. So again he didn’t
make it to the Top 10. We had hoped he would make it. But
he missed that one question.
Swapna: He was very disappointed. So we thought, okay

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

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Prasad Rekulapelli and Swapna Rojanala
Parents
Coach Kumar asked.
Swapna: Then he gave Akhil a test. He said, ‘If you do this
in 30 days, I’ll take you in my circle.’ Akhil got in.
They would email each other or we would call him every
couple of weeks just to give him a status report. But it’s not
like he was here with us, coming to our house or anything.
If he said something, Akhil would follow basically.
We’re hands off in the material sense of coaching him or
testing him, things like that. How we helped him was if he
said, ‘Mom, I need this resource, this book or this map,’ we
would help him. Or when he won the school bee, we would
reward him for his success.
Prasad: He used to come and ask us to quiz him on certain material, and then we do that, like during dinner time.
His sister Anika used to quiz him too. But beyond that, we
didn’t do much. Because at any given point, he knows more
than us (laughing).
Swapna: Yes. Like, online there are so many books out
there, and we bought some for him, but we thought, ‘How
can we quiz him? We don’t know anything about this.’ All
we can do is take his material, what he has and whatever is
out there, and go off of that.”
It’s been a year, so it’s hard to capture the feeling from
that moment. We were just taking the whole thing as it
came; we weren’t saying, ‘Oh you have to win’ or anything
like that.
Prasad: In this whole competition, or this saga that started three or four years ago, all we wanted was for Akhil to
have an experience, to go through the journey. Whatever he
learns is good for him. That’s the kind of attitude we had.
And the year before his win, in 2013, his only goal was to
meet Alex Trebek.
Swapna: Yes, his goal was just to get to the Top 10 and
meet Alex Trebek. That’s it.
Prasad: Because he likes Jeopardy! — we all watch it
together once in a while. So that was what he was really
looking forward to; and we were happy that he made it to
the Top 10. We were satisfied with whatever he achieved
that year. Of course, we’re always happy with his achievements, but that was his goal and he met it. It had nothing
to do with needing to win... It’s the small goals and what
makes him happy that we care about.
Swapna: (laughing) I think it was something he was
excited about from the minute he knew he made it to
nationals. He was like, ‘Mom, wouldn’t it be so cool if I got
on stage to meet Alex Trebek?’ It doesn’t matter if I win or
lose; I just want to meet him once.
Prasad: And that was his last year of hosting the competition.
Swapna: After 25 years! It was very exciting. The whole
process in itself was very exciting, just going there and
meeting all these kids who have similar interests and the
whole atmosphere they set up. It encouraged fun and
camaraderie. We just loved it. It was wonderful.
Prasad: And while we weren’t there when Akhil met him,
I think Alex is a very, very nice guy, and he made all of the
kids feel so comfortable and so relaxed. He remembered
each of the kids in the Top 10, what their hobbies are, and
was just very engaging with them.
Swapna: He’s a geography fanatic too I think.
As far as Akhil’s other skills, he was in his elementary
school’s gifted program. But he didn’t get in at first when he
was in third grade and took the test. His teacher was very
surprised. I really didn’t think that much about it because

It all started with cars, Akhil’s parents say.
Akhil himself has said that his initial interest in geography manifested itself through this: ‘For example, if I was
reading about cars, my focus would be like,‘This car is from this country.’ It was something that was intertwined’.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

we thought, he’ll go on without it. Then the teachers said,
‘You have to fight this because this is one child
who should be in a gifted program. He needs to be in it.
He’s really good. I’ve seen kids who don’t deserve to be in it
getting in, and your son? He needs to be in it.’ Then we
wrote a letter to the supervisor and went from there. But
we never really thought about his giftedness or his intelligence. We always just thought about his happiness as a
child. That’s what we focused on.
Character development is what we focused on. And
instilling positive values. Those are the things we thought
that he should have as a child, because they’re ingrained
during childhood, not when you get older.
Prasad: I think he’s a very curious kid. He likes to learn
all the time. He enjoys himself whenever he is learning —
anything. And he will go in-depth. If I use the example of
sports, he likes ice hockey. So he knows about each and
every player, where they’re from, what they do, everything
in detail. Or when it comes to places, he’ll know the origins
of the name of place. He really explores the depths of
things.
He also likes baseball. Even though he doesn’t play baseball right now, he can give you baseball statistics from 30
years ago. He likes Babe Ruth and read all the books on
him.
He’s a big reader, and before bed, definitely, he has to
read. It’s not just geography; random stuff also intrigues
him and makes him want to learn.
Sometimes when we go to parties, he will sit with the
adults and he’ll be listening to the conversations until he
decides to get involved and give some information he has.
The adults are always really surprised that an 11 or 12 year
old knows so many facts. Everybody is shocked at his
knowledge.
He’s very different — that’s for sure. He’s self-driven, selfmotivated, curious, but then also like I said, caring. We’ll

take credit for the character part more than his knowledge
(laughing).
Everything he does, that’s all him, but we’ll take credit for
him being a good kid. He’s respectful, he’s honest, he loves
people, he’s helpful.
Prasad: Also, he can write very good speeches. He gave a
five minutes speech at this year’s competition; he was invited to talk about what happens after the bee.
Swapna: And he also gave a speech at the state competition. (Laughing) It’s funny because he wants to go into
medicine — his next passion is biology and he can study the
human body all day — but people were saying, ‘What do
you want to go into medicine for? You’d make a good politician!’
Prasad: That’s what the County Board of Directors was
saying. Because Akhil spoke when they honored him. They
said, ‘Why medicine? Come to politics!’
Swapna: I don’t think he’ll get off that path from medicine. He’s already decided where he wants to go, what he
wants to do.
Prasad: If you had a chance to watch his speech after
winning, he mentions something about it. Actually, he’s the
one who plans his future, and we just help lay the path to
get there. Because in these competitions, what we’ve seen is
that if the kid is not interested, he can’t even win the school
bee. It has to come from the kid. You can push them to a
certain extent, but not winning at the national level.
Swapna: You can’t win something like that without the
internal drive and the passion for it. n
Swapna Rojanala worked in information security, but
quit that to spend more time with her children and help
her husband with his medical practice.
Prasad Rekulapelli is a physician specializing in
pediatrics.
They spoke to Chaya Babu.

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘I like how Akhil
always tries his
hardest’
Anika Rekulapelli
Sister

I

t was really exciting
seeing Akhil win the
bee. I liked it because
I got to learn about
geography also in the
process. I like geography
too, but I’m more on the
math side right now. I
might try geography this
year though.
I’m not sure yet if I’m
interested in competing
like Akhil did.
I think (his winning) is a
really big accomplishment
because he’s been working
for really long and I’m glad
to see him win because his
excellence paid off. I want
to follow him and work as

hard as I can to accomplish something big.
I helped him too. One
time, over winter break, I
was just sitting there the
whole time and quizzing
him for the school bee
because it was right after
winter break. It was really
fun. I wanted to do it,
even though my brother
was fine if I didn’t want
to do it because my parents would quiz him too.
I like how Akhil always
tries his hardest and
always wants to be the
best he can. He always
tries again until he gets it
perfect.

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Akhil Rekulapelli
the most exciting place you’ve been?
I don’t have a favorite place. I just have a
lot of places I’ve been to and different reasons I like them.
Probably my favorite city would be San
Francisco because it’s nice and compact and
I really like the views of the bay.
The most interesting place I’ve been to is
definitely Costa Rica. We got to hike on a
lava flow, which was pretty cool. There was
this sign, about a mile past where we were
that said, ‘You’re really close to this volcano,
go at your own risk.’ That made us feel really adventurous. Also the forests they had
there — we went to the hanging bridges
through the rain forest and got to see a
variety of creatures, like snakes and leafcutter ants.
We also went to Manuel Antonio, which
is a national park on the Pacific coast. It’s
amazing. It’s small but it has a lot of forest.
We went to a mangrove forest and I got to
eat a termite. It was just a beautiful country, and it was the right mix of ecology and
tourism. It was the perfect balance. It was
just beautiful in general.
Of all the places you’ve learned about in

your study of geography, is there a place
you’d like to go to most?
I think Germany and Switzerland. The
culture of those countries is just really
interesting. It would nice to hike in the
Alps; they have really beautiful waterfalls. I
don’t know why, but Germany has always
intrigued me. It’s a place I’ve always wanted
to go to.
Well I hope you can go! You know about
so many places — how does your passion
for geography play into some of your goals
moving forward.
Geography will definitely help me when I
travel later on in life, but not only that. I’ve
been interested in possibly doing Doctors
Without Borders or traveling across the
world and helping people in need. That’s
something I’ve definitely thought about.
I always intend to keep geography in my
life, especially through travel because I
really want to go to a lot of these places I’ve
learned about. I want to appreciate those
cultures firsthand.
So, is it a dream of yours to become a doctor?
Yeah. For a while I’ve been wanting to.
I’ve always liked biology too because it’s
like the map of the human body. It’s the
geography of our body, so to speak. We
think we have skin, we have organs, we
have a brain, but I’ve always liked to learn

about those little things that make a big
difference.
The brain, especially, is really fascinating
to me because there are so many areas and
they’re all intertwined to work together,
and though some specialize in different
areas, sometimes two or three parts will
specialize in the same area but just different facets. It’s fascinating. The brain is just
really cool... So yes, one of my other passions is biology, and I want to see if I can
pursue that later on.
You’re also active in sports right...
For fun, I play tennis, but for school, I do
rowing. Our season just ended a couple of
weeks ago.
My other extracurriculars are the Biology
Olympiad and Model UN, which is my
biggest one. We go to conferences up and
down the east coast and we debate about
world issues and try to come up with solutions. That’s definitely one of the best activities I’ve been involved in. It’s really fun
and really interesting.
Wow, you do a lot. How do you balance it?
At my school, clubs are kind of integrated
into the school experience. Every other day
we have this time for an hour and a half to
go to two clubs each day. It allows us to
have those other activities and balance
them with sports and the other things we
do, like science projects for a fair or some-

thing. It’s allowed me to expand not only
outside of geography but also within it, like
with Model UN. I’ve been able to experience and explore other subjects.
Through all of this, who has been a strong
influence on you to do everything you do?
Definitely my parents. Not only do they
quiz me, but they also really motivated me
and whenever I was feeling down, they
would pick me back up. They strongly
encouraged me to do geography and go for
my passions.
Also my sister, because she helped a lot.
I had a coach too, Coach Kumar. I would
talk to him once every two or three weeks
and we would just talk about strategies,
how to stay relaxed, what topics (the bee)
likes to focus on.
You put so much into this bee. Where do
you get our work ethic from?
I think I get it from within, from myself,
because rather than allowing other people
to influence me, I always try to go with my
own heart and where my passion leads me.
I don’t want to follow the crowd.
My parents drive me to work with those
passions. They don’t force me to do other
things; they want me to do what I like.
That’s something that makes me feel like
they’re my biggest role models and who have
made such a big difference in my life and I
wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015

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India Abroad June 19, 2015 M130

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Kumar Nandur
Coach

A

khil was one of the first to find
me through my blog and from
out of state. That was in October
2011. Plenty of people contact
me, so I have a system to figure out who
that internal wiring because not every kid
is geographically wired.
By talking to him and talking to his parents and hearing about what all he was
doing for the geography bee, I knew that
he definitely had that wiring.
I gave him a couple of assignments to
see if he could follow what I was asking
him to do because the ability to do the
assignments as asked within the stipulated
deadlines tells me that they are disciplined
as well. He was one of those kids who, if I
gave him an assignment and told him to
do it by Friday, he would finish it and send
it to me by Wednesday or Thursday.
He was on target. He was definitely
interested. He also came with a significant
background, in the sense that when someone comes to me, I check out their knowledge in terms of what kind of fundamentals they have.
So when I spoke to him, he demonstrated a strong knowledge of those fundamentals, which once again gave me the indication that he was definitely material to go
far in the competition.
One thing that Akhil was very good at
was following directions. He was very
good at figuring things out. He was internally driven.
I would talk to his parents often and ask,
‘How much help did you provide him to
get this assignment done?’ and most often
they’d say, ‘Coach, we didn’t do much; he
did it himself.’
He was a self-driven kid who’s pretty
independent in how he does things, finding answers, and putting them in context.
For example, one of the assignments that
I’d give him, in addition to the regular
ones, was to watch Jeopardy! every day. It
has a lot of geography questions, so he was
supposed to make a list of all the geography questions that are on the show on a
daily basis. He would send me a file of
those questions and answers. That contributed to his growth in knowledge.
When Akhil started, he went to the state
competition. That was in 2012, about six
months or so after we hooked up. He was
in sixth grade I believe, and he missed
some questions in the preliminary rounds,
and he didn’t make it to the top 10. That
really disheartened him. But I told him,
‘Failure is a part of long-term success,’
because some of the lessons people learn
through failure are much more long lasting. I told him he still had time, he
should take that as an experience, and
build on it with more focus and dedication and hard work.

‘Akhil was internally driven’

Akhil when he first learned he made it to the state bee in 2010.

Akhil appears on Fox News in 2014. His coach considers the National Geographic
Bee experience to have been a transformational experience for Akhil.

they cannot come back regardless of how
they did (in qualifying rounds) since they
received prizes that included scholarships… so it was lucky for Akhil that in
2013 he didn’t finish in the top three.
After that he told me, ‘Coach, I don’t
know if I should do this for one more year,’
and I said, ‘Why?’ He said that it was a lot
of hard work and he was going to be in
eight grade, which was critical for him
because he was trying to get into a prestigious high school. ‘I don’t know whether I
can commit enough time to be the national champion,’ he told me.
I gave him a month to make up his
mind, and he came back and said, ‘You
know what, Coach, I’ve decided that since
this is my last year of eligibility, I’m going
to give it everything I’ve got.’
I said, ‘Well I’m going to give you everything I’ve got to make it happen.’
So on he went. And then he went on to
be the national champion. The moment I
heard he made the cut for the top 10, I
knew he had a great chance, because I
knew how hard he had worked and how
focused he was — more so because he
knew it was his last shot. And sure
enough, with Alex Trebek being the host,
he emerged victorious.
I think the experience on the whole
transformed Akhil into a young man full
of confidence, and he now knows what he
wants to do. He’s quite passionate about
what he wants. But there’s a lot more
focus, energy, and goals as to what he
wants to achieve.
Akhil knows what he wants and has a
bright future. His head is in the right
place. He’s compassionate. He goes out of
his way to help people. He takes pride in
spreading the word about geography. He’s
become responsible about sharing his success with others.
He has spoken about wanting to be a
physician like his father, but I know that
he will be successful with whatever he
chooses to do with his commitment and
focus and of course, one of the most
important pieces in this whole equation,
the parental support and guidance. His
parents are fully behind him and they’re
with him every step of the way. I think
that whatever he does, he will do very
well.

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE REKULAPELLIS

In 2013, a year later, he becomes the
state champion in Virginia. He goes to
nationals, he cracks the Top 10 of 54 contestants, but he finishes fourth. That kind
of made him happy but it made him sad as
well. It made him happy because he came

quite a long way from the previous year,
but it made him sad because he fell short
of the top spot. But luckily for him, he finished in the fourth place, and fourth place
finisher does not get a scholarship — only
the top three finishers get scholarships, so

Kumar Nandur is a speech pathologist
by profession, and started geography
‘coaching’ with his own son. Soon it
expanded to working with others around
the country over the phone. He does this on
a volunteer basis and sees it as a service he
provides to the community.
He spoke to Chaya Babu.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M131

Presented by

S - P - E - L - L - E - B - R - I - T- I - E - S !

HE HAS A WAY
WITH WORDS
Ansun Sujoe can get through the Scripps National
Spelling Bee 2014 to be a co-champion. He can play
the piano, guitar and bassoon. He is into robotics and
math. And the winner of the India Abroad Special
Award for Achievement leaves Chaya Babu
fascinated by the texture of his interests.

INDIA ABROAD
SPECIAL AWARD FOR
ACHIEVEMENT 2014
For their deft mastery
of words; for their tremendous
resolve; for strengthening an
Indian-American tradition.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M132

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

“G

od has given him amazing
memory power,” Angel
Sujoe said of her son. “Our
friends used to call him
‘mini computer.’”
Such is the story of a 13-year-old (now 14)
partly responsible for making the 87th
Scripps National Spelling Bee exhaust its list
of words, forcing a tie — the first in over 50
years. After correctly spelling ‘feuilleton,’ a
section of a European newspaper, Ansun
Sujoe was declared co-champion of the bee
along with Sriram Hathwar.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a close one.
Ansun, looking snazzy in a red bowtie and
black vest, missed a word: ‘antigropelos.’
Meaning: A type of waterproof leggings. But
unlike any other scenario in a final tie-breaker round, he had room for this misstep.
Sriram had just misspelled his word as well:
‘Corpsbruder,’ meaning a close friend.
“Once it came down to the final pair of
words, Sriram spelled his word right, so
that meant for me that it was win or lose,”
Ansun explained. “That was it. I was on
the verge of it; I was right there. I just had
to spell one more word and that would be
it. It was definitely nerve-wracking. I
knew that not only was I so close, but
there were millions of people watching
me. That was a lot of pressure on me. But
I still maintained the ability to concentrate on the word and try to get it right.”
His reflections on that moment are spot on
with his overall nature. Loved ones and others closely acquainted with him speak of his
quiet and calm character, a sense of focus and centeredness
that leads him to be able to push forth in the face of difficulty. He was determined in his goal to win the bee, something he had set his mind to when he was in second grade,
and steadily and resolutely climbed to achieve it.
Still, while on the surface, Ansun might seem to fit the
stereotype of the studious speller who can get through the
national competition — one that fuels the idea of having no
other life, and no texture to his interests — he proves that
what meets the eye is not always what is.
He is into robotics, math (he competed in the national
competition MATHCOUNTS), music, and athletics.
Simultaneously, his interactions with his peers reveal a
kindness and humility rare for such a versatile and accomplished young individual.
“He’s just the most unusual and interesting young man,”
said Vicki Vaughn, the principal at Ansun’s school. She
described his intense dedication and discipline to all of his
endeavors, while emphasizing his modesty about his giftedness, a trait learned from his hardworking parents.
His interest in spelling was born from a way with words
but also, as his mother put it, a photographic memory. He
began competing locally in third grade, when he finished as
runner-up in Lone Star Elementary School’s Spelling Bee.
After that, he won every school competition in which he’s
participated, including Lone Star’s as a fourth grader,
Parkwood Hill Intermediate’s Spelling Bees as a fifth and
sixth grader, and Bethesda Christian School’s the following
year. For three of the four years before his major victory, he
advanced to the regional competition, placing third in 2011
and winning in 2013 and 2014 to advance to Nationals.
In 2013, Ansun missed making the semifinals by just one
point, so his championship win was a huge reward for years
of hard work.

HE HAS A WAY
WITH WORDS
Moving forward, his focus has turned to his other passions.
It’s been about a year since your big win. How has life been
since then?
At the bee itself, I was pretty shocked. I didn’t really know
what to do, but I was so tired that I was kind of not in the
moment that much. But right after, during all the interviews and stuff, I was kind of like, ‘Woah, this is a lot.’ I
think it was a lot of strain on me. It was kind of tense, doing
all those interviews. In fact, the interviews were more tense
than the spelling bee itself because I wasn’t used to that
kind of stuff.
In the bee, I was kind of used to being on stage spelling,
but in interviews I wasn’t used to saying all these things in
front of a large crowd. So it was a quite a challenge for me,
doing five interviews a day on all those famous shows, like
The Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel, etc.
After all of that passed, I started going back to normal
with everything I had done before. Like being back at
school and doing my extracurricular activities such as music
— I play the piano, guitar, and bassoon. I’ve played the
piano since I was in kindergarten, and I played the guitar
and bassoon since I was in 6th grade. I’m pretty fond of
music, and also I do some sports in my spare time. I haven’t
played sports officially yet, but next year I’m joining the soc-

Ansun Sujoe spells a word during the 87th annual
Scripps National Spelling Bee last year.
He considered the bee a lesser challenge than what
came after it.
KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

cer team and I’m also pretty interested in basketball too.
I do robotics as well... So, I have pretty diverse hobbies
and I’ve been trying to make more time for them ever since
I won the spelling bee. I now have more time to do other
things that I wanted to do before but couldn’t because I was
so tied up with spelling. But things have been going pretty
well.
Wow, you have a lot of different interests. And yet spelling
was such a big commitment amidst all that. How did your
passion for spelling begin?
When I was very little, my mom was at home while my
dad was at work, so my mom taught me a lot of subjects
and spelling was in that too. At a young age, I had a strong
interest in spelling, and when I was in second grade, I
watched the finals in the National Spelling Bee. I was like, ‘I
want to be a part of this,’ and I was really excited about it.
I made it a goal to win the National Spelling
Bee when I was in second grade. So, my mom
was very helpful and gave me my introduction
into spelling, but another thing that fostered my
love for spelling is my talent for memory and
my spelling abilities.
God gave me that talent to memorize easily
and recollect things, and spelling was a way to
exercise that.
4M133
When do you think you learned that you had
this incredible ability?

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M133

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M132
Ansun Sujoe
My parents did a good job of bringing
that out in me. When I was about five years
old they were really helping me out and giving me exercises like quizzing me on easy
spelling words. That sort of pushed me
toward my interest in spelling, but also
math and other subjects. Then, like I said,
when I was in second grade and watching
the National Bee, there were all these kids
who were nailing words that I had never
even heard before. I was pretty intrigued.
So, I guess that drove me.
With the spelling bee, you can start competing in third grade, so my parents helped
me start preparing that year, and from then
on I’ve been growing in my knowledge of
spelling. That’s how I discovered I had a
knack for it.
Would you say it’s your passion for language or more your penchant for memorization that makes you good at spelling?
At first, I was more memorizing things,
but as I kept going, I realized it was all a
part of a pattern in the English language
and other languages. As I continued, it was
more that passion for language. I was
always searching root words and stuff like
that, so I had a deep interest in learning the
actual background of the language. But I
still had to put in a lot of effort. Before the
spelling bee, I would study for three to
four hours a day maybe.
What did your studying entail?
I went through the dictionary looking for good words to learn. Obviously
there are many words in the dictionary
but not all of them are adequate —
some are short, some are hyphenated,
so I’d filter out the words I wanted to
study and then I’d go in depth and
analyze the words by looking into their
roots and linking them to other words
I know.
That was basically my study time,
which I’d do for anywhere from about
an hour or so in my leisure time to
about four hours during spelling season.
That’s maybe in January or February
because that’s when the area bee
comes in, and things get a little harder
then, especially in March when the

A J Calloway, right, interviews the
2014 Spelling Bee co-champions
during their visit to 'Extra' in New
York City days after their win.
Ansun, left, says he found these
rounds of television interviews
more challenging than
participating in the Bee.
COURTESY: THE SUJOES

regional bee happens, and I start cracking
the books for about three hours a day.
Then for the National Bee, I probably
study for about four hours a day, or as
much time as I can get after school and
after my homework. I was in 13 or 14 bees
since third grade because first there’s the
school level, then there’s the district level,
and then after that we go to the regional
level, and then finally the nationals.
That’s intense. What kept you driven to be
so focused over the years?
I think it was the goal I had in mind. And
a lot of encouragement from my parents
and sister and from a lot of others. I think it
was that encouragement that kept me going
even if I lost — because I’ve lost a bunch of
spelling bees. But still, I maintained my
goal and I never gave up. I think (my goal
to win the National Bee) was my driving
force to study so hard.
What did your family do to support you?
My parents helped me by quizzing me on
words when I was in fifth and sixth grade.
But when I got to seventh grade, I started
getting a little more independent in my
studying.
The most helpful and important part
though I think were the words of support
and positive encouragement my parents
gave me. That was more significant in
terms of what they did for me.
And my sister is only nine, but she cheers
me on.

They also instilled in me hard work and
putting in a lot of effort into whatever I’m
doing. They always taught me: whenever
you do something, do it to the best of your
ability. My determination and internal
motivation come from the values they have
given me.
Are these the values you feel they exemplify in their own lives?
Well, yes, because my mom and dad told
me stories of when they were young, and of
how they were studying in their high school
and college years. In particular, when my
mom was studying in college for exams and
stuff, she was really dedicated to putting in
long hours and she sacrificed fun and other
activities...
Also my dad had a lot of examples like
that too, getting almost perfect scores in all
his exams.
Has your cultural upbringing influenced
you in some way in your achieving this goal?
Yes. Indians culturally value education a
lot. They want to do their best academically
through hard work and to strive in whatever they do. And for some reason, Indians
are attracted to spelling — I don’t know
why (laughing). But just because you’re
Indian, that doesn’t mean you have to win.
And just because you’re not Indian, it doesn’t mean you won’t win.
Basically, yes, it is in my cultural upbringing and values that are instilled in me that
really helped, and a lot of Indians share

that in common, where
education is strongly emphasized. It’s a priority. They take it very seriously. That might
be a valid reason for why a lot of Indians
keep winning the bee.
What have you learned from all the hard
work you’ve done? What was the best takeaway?
The spelling bee was more of a journey
than just about the end point. It was all the
steps I took to get to the title, rather than
the title itself, that taught me a lot. I
learned how to persevere, to not get down
in the face of failure, to continue in my
effort, and to study even if it means giving
up other things — so I guess really the
value of a work ethic.
In the times when I didn’t win bees, it
would feel like my work didn’t pay off or
something, but I had to learn to push
through when things seemed tough. That
was the most challenging part,
or a big lesson.
In sixth grade, the year
before I won, I only made it to
the preliminary round. I
missed the semi-finals by one
point. That was hard.
And through the national
spelling bee, I got to meet new
people with the same interests
and it was really fun to talk to
them and have people through 4M136
the whole experience to be

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M133
Ansun Sujoe
with and share it all with. That was probably my
favorite part. And some of us stay in touch.
I keep in contact with a finalist from the 2014
spelling bee, Kate Miller, who lives in Abileen,
Texas, and in fact she came to our house once last
year. I’m also still in touch with Sriram (Hathwar,
co-champion), and another speller, Lokesh. So I do
have a lot of connections to the spelling bee still.
That’s great that you’ve maintained those ties.
How was it being head-to-head with Sriram in that
last round?
As the words kept decreasing and it came down
to the final three (out of 25 in the tie-breaker
round), I was like, ‘Ooh, there might be an opportunity to be co-champions! If we just hang in
there, we could have a co-championship.’
Then once it came down to the final pair of
words, Sriram spelled his word right, so that meant
for me that it was win or lose. That was it. I was on
the verge of it; I was right there. I just had to spell
one more word and that would be it.
It was definitely nerve-wracking. I knew that not
only was I so close, but there were millions of people watching me. That was a lot of pressure on me.
But I still maintained the ability to concentrate on
the word and try to get it right.
Earlier in the round, we both missed a word.
When he missed his, and then I got mine, I was
like, ‘Hm, I’m not sure I know this word. I’ve never
gotten this word before.’ I guess I just tried it
knowing that if I missed it I at least had another
chance. So I tried but I got it wrong. Yeah, that was
kind of nerve-wracking too.
And then you went from a middle school kid
learning trying to learn spelling bee words to being
on national TV.
That was a very big jump. I wasn’t used to all
that. This was my first experience being in the center of so much attention, with millions of people
rooting for you and then knowing who you are. It
was a big change for me. I didn’t know how to
react or what to do. But I think the best part of it
was getting to meet many famous personalities.
Who were you most excited to meet?
I got to meet President Obama in the White
House. We got to go as a family, my parents and
my sister, and also Sriram’s family too got to go.
It was a unique experience, being in the White
House. Not everyone gets to do that; not everyone
gets to walk in and see the President.
We got to talk to him, and he gave us a signed
autograph and a mini Constitution. And he gave us
M&Ms. He was also very encouraging, and we
asked to spell a word or two.
The words we missed in the bee, we asked him.
He was close! It was fun.
The President was down to earth, humble, like a
father kind of. It was a good experience.
Well now you know you can spell better than our
President!
That’s true (laughing).
Going back to all of your other activities, which
you have a lot of, will you be focusing more on one
of those moving forward?
I’ve loved math from the start, but I had to put it
aside to focus on spelling. So, I participated in this

Ansun Sujoe through
the years.
COURTESY: THE SUJOES

competition called MATHCOUNTS. It’s a nationwide math competition for the middle school level,
and I started as a sixth grader but I was more into
the spelling bee at the time. So in my chapter, I
placed ninth, and I went to states but then I didn’t
do so great there. Then in seventh grade, I went and
did just a little better. But that was the year I won
the spelling bee.
So now, in eighth grade, I’ve had a lot of time to
do math and my other interests, and at MATHCOUNTS I placed second in the chapter and then I
did pretty well at states... I think math-related activities will take a little more precedence now.
Also, next year I have the PSAT, so I’ll probably be
concentrating on that, and high school generally.
I’m going to try to get a good score on the PSAT,
hopefully a perfect score, and I’ll try to get a scholarship. That’s my next focus.
What are your dreams for the future beyond the
next few years in high school?
I don’t know what my long-term plans are, but I’ll
probably pursue a career in engineering, like my
dad. He does computer applications software and
he’s a developer.
Since I’m interested in math, engineering is pretty
interesting for me. The summer college course I’m
taking... is coming up in June, and I’m planning to
do it in web development. So I have a pretty busy
summer ahead. I’m excited for that and all the other
opportunities that might come my way. n

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M137

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INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘Lucky and proud to experience
Ansun’s achievements with him’

Sujoe Bose with his family.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY: THE SUJOES

Ansun Sujoe’s interests range from
spelling like a champ
to robotics and music.
Sujoe Bose
Father

T

he main thing I remember feeling
when Ansun won was, ‘Wow!’
Sometimes I think back to how it all
played out, and I was actually ready to
get him — like how the parents go and
receive their children once a round is
over and they’ve gotten out. I thought,
‘Okay, at some point he’s going to come
down.’
I was just waiting there.
Before he went to the competition,
we were just casually talking. He woke
up at 5 am on the day of the competition, and was practicing words and we
were thinking, ‘Oh no, he’s going to be
up until 10 or 10:30 at night.’ Because
the competition started at 8 (pm).
We told him, ‘Hey you’ll be having a long day today so
you need to pace yourself.’
And he said, ‘It might be even longer than you think’
(laughing).

So we just kind of joked around about it. During the
competition, I was wondering when he was going to come
down, and I was waiting.
Anyway, it was going on and the words were coming
out, and at one point, they both misspelled and then it

kept going. And I remember thinking,
‘Okay, it looks like he’s just going for
the kill.’
At the end, once the confetti started
coming down, I literally was like,
‘What?!’ I was so surprised.
It was awesome — and sort of unbelievable. Of course, it was God’s grace
that he was able to keep his composure,
and even though the words were confusing, I think he had heard the words,
though he may not have been 100 percent sure of them, but still he kept his
composure and he was able to recollect
the spellings.
There are a lot of factors that make
the outcome: Which words you get,
who gets out, etcetera. Each of these
change the whole dynamic, so I feel it is
God’s grace that, first of all, he was
given the talent, and second, that he
was able to put the effort in, and third,
that the right things happened. So it
was a combination of things.
At the time I came to the US, I never
thought about something like this.
When I was just a bachelor here, I was
in a completely different mindset. But I
remember that when Sameer Mishra
won the spelling bee (2008), it came in
the paper.
I was looking at it, and at my workplace too people were talking about it
like, ‘Hey, it looks like this kid who’s of
Indian origin just won the spelling bee.’
And I was like, ‘Okay yeah, there are
people here and there who are geniuses’
(laughing).
But it never really struck me that it
could be a possibility for Ansun. It didn’t even cross my mind at that point.
Also, grandparents always talk highly
of their grandkids, and that’s especially
the case with our parents. If we tell
them something, they make it out to be
ten times bigger.
When Ansun was in sixth grade, he
won the regional bee, and they said he
won the national championship. Of
course, they don’t know all the different
levels here, and they have a very simple
life, but their prayer was that he should
win. So we had a lot of those blessings
as well. All of his grandparents sent
their blessings.
We are very lucky and proud to experience Ansun’s
achievements with him. n
Sujoe Bose works in data and analytics at Sabre.
He spoke to Chhaya Babu.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M138

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘As Indians,
the cultural
value we
place on
learning
played a role’
Angel Sujoe
Mother

I

f I start from Ansun’s childhood, that will
speak volumes. I had the great opportunity to stay home with Ansun while my husband worked.
It was a privilege to stay with my children,
especially Ansun. From the time he was three
years old, I was able to teach him concepts in
math and other things at home.
He started reading when he was four, and I
found that out through sitting with him every
Angel Sujoe celebrates Ansun’s National Spelling Bee victory.
day. I could discern his strong points, what he
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
was good at, and I realized that math was a big
strength for him, and he was very strong in his
India even though we were poor. My husband’s family was
memory power.
much better off than mine — I was one of seven children
God has given him amazing memory power. My husin my family. My parents were very ordinary. My mom
band I wondered how, and our friends used to call him
was a teacher and my father was an artist, we were a mid‘mini computer.’ Whenever there was a particular piece of
dle class family but my father didn’t have much education.
information, if we forgot it, like street names of our
So he was very determined to give the best education to
friends’ houses, even when he was small, he would always
all seven of us, and we are all now doing things like engiremember it. We were amazed.
neering, have masters in different areas, and Ansun has
It was by God’s grace that we put that memory power in
heard of how we studied even with circumstances like frethe right direction and nurtured it so he was able to take
quent electricity outages.
this path.
My husband studied for engineering back in India and
We came to know about the spelling bee when he was in
here as well, and how he got into his program on a merit
first grade. In second grade he set the goal that he wanted
scholarship — things like that. So we tell the kids our own
to be one among the national champions. I used to quiz
experiences as bedtime stories. They love to hear it. They
him from the children’s dictionary. I started with that.
are very excited by our childhood and college experiences.
Slowly we moved on to higher level words, and as things
We impart these moral values through stories.
progressed, my husband helped him a lot. But when they
These days, everywhere you look there are distractions.
were small, I just enjoyed every moment with them and
I’m really thankful to have children like these and to see
taught Ansun new concepts every day. It was an amazing
Ansun have such focus. I’m really blessed and proud as a
time.
mother that he’s going in the right direction morally and
I had Ansun’s sister when he was five-and-a-half. I had
educationally. I’m just so happy and proud.
plenty of time with him when nobody could disturb us.
After the National Spelling Bee win, there were the
We just had a great few years. That was really a great
interviews here and there, but before that things were
foundation that he got, and I do think, as Indians, the culreally hectic. There were a lot of sacrifices involved for
tural value we place on learning and education for the
Ansun. Of course, we used to have fun too, but it was a lot
kids played a bit role.
of work. For us too as parents. We can’t just go and enjoy
We take education very seriously and work hard, but
and leave the kids to study — whenever they sit and study,
also Indians are famous for our memorization abilities. I
we sit nearby as well so they’re able to concentrate.
think all of this combined really helped him, and as parBefore the bee, things were very busy. During the coments, we also put in a lot of effort to support him.
petition, it was very nerve-wracking. My husband didn’t
Everything worked out and here we are, so blessed to see
show that at all, but if you watched the finals, you can see
what he has accomplished.
that I was so nervous that I didn’t even look up. I was just
We share our stories with Ansun about our lives back in

In Chicago, Ansun and his sister Hephzibah
enjoy that top-of-the-world feeling.
COURTESY: THE SUJOES

praying.
We didn’t actually expect this since he missed the semifinals the previous year. We told him it was enough to just
get to the semifinals and maybe even the finals. That
would have been good for us. We said, ‘When you get to
eighth grade, then we’ll think about the win. This year
just try for the finals.’ So it was a real surprise for us.
My husband and I were ready to go get him down
whenever he was out — as the competition went on, one
by one the children were coming down from the stage,
and we were ready to get him at any time. We did not
anticipate the outcome. And as the competition was narrowing down, I still didn’t think he was going to win.
There were so many reactions in the end because of our
mix of nerves and tiredness and excitement, but we were
just really shocked.
Throughout the experience, we usually just encouraged
Ansun to try his best. ‘You need to put in your best effort,
and God will do the rest.’ That’s what we tell the kids.
From third grade onwards, he was trying. Then he went to
the regionals in fourth grade. So whenever he fails to get
to the next level, we just tell him, ‘Okay you did your best.’
That’s all we want.
I didn’t even imagine that I’d come to America, but
everything has worked out so wonderfully. I guess I came
over here for a good reason. n
Angel Sujoe started as a teacher in the local
independent school district two years ago. Before that
she stayed home with the kids and had worked as a lecturer in India.
She spoke to Chaya Babu.

India Abroad June 19, 2015

M139

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M140

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
Vicki Vaughn
Principal

A

‘A student drawn to
challenging problems’

nsun’s parents enrolled him in Bethesda
Christian School when he was going into the seventh grade, so I have known him for two years
now. I actually knew him a little before he
enrolled because his sister was already here in our school,
and I think they waited a year or two before they were able
to get him into our school, but I knew him as a
does is individual — he pracsibling before he actually went to school here.
tices his instruments, he plays
Since then I’ve gotten to know him better, and
the piano and the bassoon, by
he’s just one of those diligent students yet extremehimself, and would study for the
ly humble. One of the teachers described him as
spelling bee by himself.
the type of student that is drawn to challenging
His parents set up some probproblems like a duck to the water.
lems to help him with that, but
He always is intrigued with the difficulty of a
much of what he does on his
classroom, and he always tends to rise to that chalown is in a solitary fashion.
lenge. He’s just the most unusual and interesting
Interacting with large groups is
young man.
not naturally what he’s drawn
The family is very interested in education, so he
to, but I saw him developing
doesn’t spend his time like most teenagers — he
that further as he did all those
really does spend his time improving things about
interviews.
who he is, like he was studying for spelling for a
He is very open to different
number of years, and once that was behind him,
things. When he came to our
he focused on studying math. He entered a math
school, he told us of two intercompetition and did well in that. He’s someone
ests: Of course he told us about
who is always interested in rising to challenging
the spelling bee, but he was also
work of any classroom or situation.
involved with a program called
When he came to this school, we already knew
Ansun Sujoe, back row, center, is on the Bethesda Christian School MATHCOUNTS
MATHCOUNTS, which is a
he had set a goal to go the National Spelling Bee,
team. In fact, his principal said, “Because of Ansun, we had a MATHCOUNTS team for
nationwide program. So,
and we knew that he had already gone and he was
because of Ansun, we had a
hoping that he would be the champion by his
the first time.” Right, Ansun gets another win.
MATHCOUNTS team for the
eighth grade year. Again, he is very self-motivated,
COURTESY: BETHESDACHRISTIANSCHOOL.ORG and THE SUJOES
first time.
so all of sudden I had a concern when I was
He won the championship in DC, and he said, ‘Now this
staff members and people in the community as well as stuwatching him...
will give me time for robotics and maybe even sports.’
dents here watching it while it was going on. Then we had
I started feeling guilty because he just came to our
He has come back and been involved with the robotics
a reception a few weeks after he came back because he was
school, which has a lot of homework, and his old school
team, which he’s a valuable member of, and it’s interesting
out of the area for a while due to all the publicity. I really
didn’t have the same academic expectations, so I thought,
because his PE teacher has also said that between the sevappreciated the attitude of his classmates; they were high‘Oh my goodness, I hope we haven’t taken away from his
enth and eighth grades his physical abilities have really
fiving him and cheering him on... They were excited and
ability to win this competition!’
begun to develop in a new way. They saw him take that to
very supportive, and I find Ansun to be the same way. He’s
Witnessing that experience at the National Spelling Bee
the next level.
very excited and very supportive of his peers. If somebody’s
was probably the most exciting experience that I’ve had as
He’s becoming a strong runner. It’s almost like whatever
struggling or needs help, Ansun just steps right in and
an educator for over 30 years. The whole format of the bee
he puts his mind to, he’s going to develop that skill.
helps. He fits in very well with the group even though his
was wonderful, but just watching a young man who has
Those were not things that he had had time for. He had
abilities are exceptional. He just gets along with everybody
such a humble heart go in and spell and use all of the skills
not played sports before because of his practicing for the
and is well received by both staff members and students
he’s developed and all the practice that he had put in — to
spelling bee, and now he has the opportunity to become
alike.
see him implement all of that to accomplish his goal a year
more well-rounded by doing all these other activities.
I think most people would see Ansun as initially a very
early was thrilling.
The Sujoe family is just wonderful as well. I got to spend
reserved personality. He’s very attentive, very focused, very
One of the things that’s just so obvious about Ansun is
a few days with them in Washington, DC, so I got to know
respectful, but for those who have an opportunity to get to
that he is someone with true humility. He recognizes that
them on another level there. They are committed to educaknow him, he has a terrific sense of humor and he’s able to
his gifts and talents come from the lord and that he’s only
tion, to allowing their kids to become the best that they
find humor in the simple things in life. Those who have the
polishing them and being a good steward over them. He
can become, committed to developing a diverse set of skills
chance to know him better see him in that light.
really is a very, very humble young man.
within their children.
There are things that he can’t do as well as his classJust to see a person like that win is inspiriting for all of
The one thing that’s interesting is that Ansun has this
mates. He uses these as an opportunity to grow.
us who were involved.
self-discipline to put forth the effort to achieve. This is a
For example when he came here he was playing the basHe did all of his studying outside of school. He would do
family who — I’m not absolutely sure but I think — doesn’t
soon, and he wasn’t as strong as our other bassoon players,
his assignments — he’s very diligent, so he’d get his work
have a TV in the house. They really focus on their kids
but it didn’t take him long to see that other students were
done — and he was so dedicated that he would then spend
becoming strong in their natural abilities, so they’re very
doing well, and he just set a new expectation for himself
the extra time every evening studying spelling. He did that
busy but not with the distractions of the world; they’re
and he gave the other bassoon player a run for her money!
in the summer before he came to our school.
busy helping their kids grow and be their best selves.
Overall I think other students feel accepted by him and
He was just very committed to the goal, and he worked
We have just been very pleased to have a young man with
encouraged by him and they really enjoy his sense of
at it tirelessly. Few are willing to pay the price of sacrificing
us who is sincere and possesses humility, which is very
humor. But you do have to get to know him to see that side
to reach a goal like that.
much a part of who he is, and to stand back and watch
of him because of his reserved nature.
I was asked at the championship if I was surprised that
what he’s able to accomplish. n
If you had seen him in all those interviews on national
he won, but I’ve never known a student who was so deditelevision after he won, you would have seen that that’s
cated to something. I really had confidence that he was
Vicki Vaughn is Principal at Ansun Sujoe’s school,
probably an area that does not come naturally to him.
going to have the opportunity to win...
Bethesda Christian School in Fort Worth, Texas.
Even as he went through the interview process, I saw him
It was also very exciting for his peers. We had a large
She spoke to Chaya Babu.
get a little better each time. So much of the work that he
room at school where we televised the bee, and we had

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M141

Presented by

S - P - E - L - L - E - B - R - I - T- I - E - S !

HE LOVES WORDS,
AND LANGUAGES
‘I always had an interest in language, especially because I
spoke my native tongue, Kannada, first.
After I went to day care, I obviously had to learn English and
I didn’t know any at the time, so I really developed a sense of
language and a love of words.’
Sriram Hathwar, co-winner at the Spelling Bee and winner of
the India Abroad Special Award for Achievement, tells Chaya
Babu that the coolest thing about winning was meeting the
President.

INDIA ABROAD
SPECIAL AWARD FOR
ACHIEVEMENT 2014
For their deft mastery of
words; for their tremendous
resolve; for strengthening
an Indian-American
tradition.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M142

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

HE LOVES
WORDS,
AND
LANGUAGES

“S

he’s really good at the strategy and usually beats me,”
said Sriram Hathwar, about
playing Scrabble with his
grandmother when she visits from India every few years.
“Even though I might have the right
word and I know what words I can make
with my tiles, it’s always hard to find a
place to put them down.”
This, coming from the winner of a competition that requires contestants to know
all the words in the dictionary — after all,
any one could be picked at random on bee
day — says something about the power of
family. Sriram also credits his determination and conscientiousness to his parents,
both doctors, who came from India and
settled in New York.
With words like ‘nocifensor’ and ‘sdrucciola’ showing up in the final round f the
2014 Scripps National Spelling Bee, when
Sriram was in a tete-a-tete with Ansun
Sujoe, anything could have happened.
Moments later he emerged victorious,
but with a co-champion. Little spellebrities, you could say. And then he was quoted
repeatedly having the most noble response
to such an outcome: ‘I think we both know
that the competition is against the dictionary and not against each other,’ he told the
media with confetti still streaming down
around him.
And he was as sincere as can be. A year
later, Sriram continues to be modest about
his accomplishment, speaking matter-offactly about his long stint as a Scripps
competitor and having gone all the way to
nationals on his first try, when he was just
eight years old.
As the youngest-ever participant in the
National Spelling Bee, he came in 91st that
year. He advanced steadily, knocking down
each year a little better than the last, collecting the lessons of loss and putting them
to use for learning.
He proceeded to the national level every
year except when he was in fourth and
sixth grades, and finally came in third in
2013. The following year was his last shot.
Since he was really just going for a personal best, second place would have been
sufficient. But his eight-year marathon to
the finish served him well. And he was the
first spelling bee champion from upstate

Sriram Hathwar, right, on Jimmy Kimmel Live, one of the “cooler” moments
that came with the Scripps National Spelling Bee win...
... But the coolest was when Sriram, center, and his co-champ Ansun Sujoe
met the President.
RANDY HOLMES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES and COURTESY: THE HATHWARS

New York since Tim Kneale won
in 1976.
Even without his veteran status with spelling
bees, however, Sriram is well-seasoned in competitive academic endeavors. With math as a favorite
subject at school, he entered MATHCOUNTS, a
mathematics competition, and came in 27th in
New York state, and he also went for the National
Geographic Bee, coming in 6th in the state. Not
bad for someone whose focus was on something
else entirely.
Since his major spelling win, he has won the
Diamond Business Challenge along with Shreyas
Parab, a speller friend he met through Scripps.
“I think that camaraderie is one of the key parts
of the spelling bee that I took with me,” Sriram
said.
Sharing his knowledge with others is one of his
strengths, his mother Roopa said, something he
feels compelled to do. Just last month, back at the
national bee once again to see his younger brother
Jairam compete, other parents were approaching
her to say what a good kid Sriram is.
He was there encouraging the contestants and
making them feel special and optimistic.
But even with his way with words, math abilities,
entrepreneurial inclinations, and kind character,
Sriram’s dreams for the future currently lie in medicine. Strangely
enough, spelling is what gave him a
peek into the world of ophthalmology,
which he hopes to pursue, so clearly
anything is possible for the young
champ.
How have things been for you since
your big national win?
The spelling bee granted me many
opportunities, like allowing me to go
4M143
on Jimmy Kimmel Live and do a lot of
cool interviews, and even meeting the

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M143

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M142

Sriram Hathwar
President. But since then, I’ve been pretty
busy because we went to India and high
school is taking up my time.
The spelling bee was an integral part of
my life, but I think I’m just as busy now,
after it. I was just on the tennis team this
season, which just ended, so when we go
to matches we get home around 8 or 9.
Before I’d spend two to three hours a day
spelling, so that’s about equal there.
I also do debate club and we
have a TED Ed club at our
school, where we talk about
TED talks, and I did something
called Academic All Stars, in
which we went to other schools
to compete for trivia bowl
questions. Those are the main
things I did this year.
I know you’ve participated in
a range of competitions across
subjects. How have your peers
at school reacted to this and
your win?
I guess they see me as someone who is in a lot of academic
competitions. But I also hope
to be seen as a good friend. My
classmates were elated to see
me win the bee. A lot of people gave me cards. They were
happy that I was able to do so
well.
A lot of your school activities
have competitive elements as
well. Is that something that
you find exciting?
I’ve always enjoyed competition, but I like learning more.
I always liked going to
Academic All Stars just so I
could learn the new information that’s in the questions.
That’s great. So did you get
into spelling for the knowledge as well?
How did your interest develop?
I always had an interest in language,
especially because I spoke my native
tongue, Kannada, first. After I went to day
care, I obviously had to learn English. But
I didn’t know any at the time, so I really
developed a sense of language and a love
of words.
As my parents exposed me to more
words in English, I became really interested at that point. When I was in second
grade, my mom approached my teacher to
see whether I could just be a spectator to
the mock competition at our school, not
even participate.
But slowly I realized that maybe I
should try participating just to see how it
would go. And then I won the school bee
and the regional bee and I made it to the
nationals in second grade.
From that point on, I realized that

maybe I could try to pursue this even
more. So the next year, with my mom
coaching me, we went through some more
word lists. And by going through them, I
was actually able to make it to the semifinals in third grade.
Each year, I got better and better in the
nationals, and because of that progression,
I was able to win last year.
What was it like being so young and
advancing so far in the bee?
I think because I was so young, I was
exposed at an earlier age to a lot of the
pressure that a lot of kids are afraid of.

That was a bit of a let down because I
thought I had prepared well, but I knew
the next year that I would be able to do a
lot better. I studied harder, so I did better.
Each year I was motivated to keep going
and try to actually win the trophy.
Through those years, what was your
mental process and approach to success?
My mentality for the spelling bee was
mainly to do my best. I knew I would be
confident if I tried to expose myself to all
the words in the dictionary. I would go
through the dictionary and look at the
words and try to think of ways that I could

Sriram Hathwar reacts after he spells a word in the semifinals of the 2011 Scripps
National Spelling Bee contest. By then he had two years of competing behind him
and was three years away from his big win.
LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS

Since I experienced it so young, I don’t
think it made me as nervous.
As I grew up too, I felt more calm on
stage. I think that helped a lot. Just participating at a young age was quite a cool
experience and it makes me a bit unique.
I was just a little kid, but I remember
the feelings of being in awe while listening
to the other spellers on stage and just
watching others try to win the bee. It
motivated me. I knew I was just trying to
have fun at that point. I wasn’t too serious.
But as I tried to progress, I became more
serious about the bee.
Each year I went to the nationals, I progressed, but in 2010 and 2012, I didn’t
advance past the regional competition.

remember them. I did that to not feel
nervous and feel confident that I had at
least been exposed to all the words. That
was my mentality in preparing.
On stage, I knew that if I had a solid
foundation by going through the curriculum, then if I got a word and I got it
wrong, I shouldn’t let it bring me down
too much.
Having a strong work ethic drives me
both in spelling and generally in life. My
love for words really drove me to pursue
spelling over other topics I was interested
in. I get that work ethic from my parents,
who obviously worked hard as students in
India; that has been passed on to me so I
try to work hard too and do my best.

Did you do anything else to study aside
from go through the dictionary?
Mainly my mother would quiz me from
small lists that were provided by the bee.
Knowing that I knew those words was
helpful. My mom also worked with me in
going through the dictionary and eventually I started to study it independently.
As time progressed, I spent more time
each day. But studying the dictionary was
my primary method. However, it’s so
much simple memorization as much as
coming up with ways to learn and remember the words.
For example, with roots, I
knew I wouldn’t have to memorize the word, so it’s not that
I would think less of the word
necessarily as much as I knew
I had to pay attention more to
words that would stump me a
bit more.
So I would write down lists
of the words that I thought
might have taken me down. I
would just keep writing those
lists, and I guess it paid off.
To go back, you attribute your
love of language to the fact that
you had to learn English as a
second language when you were
little. You may not recall, but do
you have a passion for language
overall? Is this something you’ll
take forward in some way?
I think my career in spelling
is over. But there are a lot of
questions that come from that.
When it comes to a love of
language generally, I think I
do have that. I’m learning
French at school and I always
try to learn more outside of
what they’re teaching in class.
Exploring different languages allows me to understand the world better because
if I understand a culture or a
language, I understand more about the
globe. In addition to developing a strong
work ethic and perseverance by competing
in the spelling bee, I’ve also developed a
strong foundation of not only the English
language, but many others.
Also, because of being bilingual, that
allowed me to develop my interest in language. Because I learned English second, I
had a different interest in words, especially with my parents trying to
teach me faster and more
than what I might have picked
up at day care. I attribute my
interest to my parents in that
way.
It sounds like you learned a
lot at such a young age. What
have you learned most from
being in the bees?
I think the biggest aspect of 4M144
being involved in the bee is

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M144

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014
3M143

Since getting glasses in kindergarten,
Sriram Hathwar has been interested in
how the eye operates and he may well
choose opthalmology as a field of study.

Sriram Hathwar
the camaraderie. Obviously we prepare a lot
and very long for 51 weeks in the year, but
once we get there during bee week, it’s just a
time to have fun.
You meet a lot of new spellers from different states, and I still keep contact with some
of them. That camaraderie is one of the key
parts of the spelling bee that I took with me.
I did a business competition with my friend
Shreyas Parab, who was a speller from
Philadelphia last year. We actually created a
business pitch for a spelling product. We’re
still in the process of implementing it, but we
just had to pitch the idea (for the competition). We went and presented our idea to the
Diamond Business Challenge in Delaware,
and we wound up winning.
Wow! Congrats, that’s so exciting. Can you
tell me more about the product?
Well, it’s hypothetical at the moment. But
we are trying to look into software developers. Basically it’s called Spell for Success, and
we want it to be a software that allows
spellers to create word lists from a large database that has all the word entries in there.
All a user has to do is select the words they
need to learn, because most spellers spend
more time creating word lists than studying
them. We wanted to eliminate that problem.
Effectively they’d be able to access videos and
lectures and make their own study quizzes, so
it would help the speller by reducing a lot of
time.
I guess this idea stemmed from your own
experience.
Yes. We’d gone through the competition
and the struggle to cover the curriculum.
Shreyas approached me in November or
December, and we discussed how feasible it
was, how we could grow, and we even took some surveys,
which we included in our business plan.
When we made it past the preliminary competition, we
were faced with competitors from Moldova, Tunisia,
Tanzania, Kenya. They came to the event in Delaware and
we all pitched our ideas to a panel of judges there, and
since Shreyas and I were qualified to build such a product
and our unique value proposition, that allowed us to win.
I had no idea about this business competition. What a
great way to use your spelling experience for another activity. Is business something you want to do in the future?
I hadn’t thought about it too much before, but I have
developed entrepreneurial interests after going through
the competition. It’s actually part of the Young
Entrepreneurs Academy, which is a business forum for
students across the country. Just going to a couple of talks
at the summit, which was held at the finals of the competition, has spurred some new interest in me.
I was going to ask what a major challenge was with the
bee, but you seem to have hit on this tedious list-making as
a major one. During the bee itself, what tripped you up?
Throughout the bee, I was always just thinking about
doing my best and trying to think exclusively about the
word I was given on stage. By using the technique of just
thinking about a word solely, I think that allowed me to
be more focused. As each word progressed, I obviously

COURTESY: THE HATHWARS

knew how many spellers were left in each round, but I
really thought that it was my own competition to see how
well I could do.
It did come to a point where I had missed a word but
the other speller, Ansun, also missed his word. So because
we both faltered then, it was a kind of funny moment. I
didn’t feel too bad anyway because I knew I had done better than the previous year, even if he had gotten it right.
Then when I was back in, I knew it was a new opportunity and I was grateful that I was able to come back and
have a chance to win with him.
I remember our words of course. The word I missed was
‘corpsbruder’ and the word he missed was ‘antigropelos.’
The first word is just another term for a friend or a close
comrade, and then the second is a type of waterproof leggings. I’m glad we were both reinstated because both of us
missed first and then won it in the end.
My final word was ‘stichomythia.’ When I received that
word, I didn’t know it would be my winning word because
it was just the beginning of the final round, so I just
spelled it as if it was any normal word. But when I got it
right and I heard that there was the potential to be cochampions, and then Ansun got his word right, I was
happy that we could both win.
Based on the fact that there have been only three other
times in the history of the bee that there were co-champi-

ons, how did that feel to you?
It’s a very unique part of the spelling bee.
A lot of people have approached me and
asked, ‘Do you think you would have liked
to have won it alone?’ and I think it’s great
that both of us were able to win. It shows
that we were both deserving, and in a way,
it makes for a better story because, since
it’s such a rare occurrence, more people
could become interested in the spelling bee
and learn more about it.
I also liked that I was able to spell more
words because it came down to a championship word list with 25 words left, and
once we had exhausted enough words that
they could not pick a sole winner, the
panel had to decide it as a draw.
It was fun going through each word with
Ansun so that we could kind of show how
good we both are.
After the win, what was the coolest part
of sharing this with him?
When we went on Kelly & Michael, we
had to do a mini spelling competition
against them — co-champions versus cohosts. That was fun. We won.
On Jimmy Kimmel, it was the two of us
against him. That was the best show we
went on, I’d say. It was a bee in which we
had to spell words that were completely
mispronounced. They were pronounced in
a very unique accent by one of the people
on the show. So by just going through, and
laughing along the way as the words were
given to us, that was a fun time. Probably
the coolest show I went on.
But the coolest opportunity I was granted was going to
meet the President.
Also, since I said that I’m intersected in ophthalmology
during the bee, the chief of the Wills Eye Hospital in
Philadelphia had noticed this and invited me to the hospital to get a tour because it’s the best eye hospital in the
world.
It was great that I was able to go there and just see the
place and all the equipment they have.
Is that what you want to do in the future?
Yes. I got glasses in kindergarten and I’ve been interested in how the eye operates and how it’s so responsible for
our perception of the world.
I had a lot of headaches and we realized my vision was
changing, so I got glasses and I learned just how important the eye was to having a sense of what’s going on
around you.
I’ve always wanted to help people through medicine so
once I developed an interest in the eye, I guess ophthalmology was a natural direction I wanted to go in.
The chief of the Wills Eye Hospital recognizing that was
a really cool opportunity. I actually got into scrubs and
was able to see all the equipment used in cataract surgeries and even got a retinal scan. It was exciting to see all
the technology used in the field. It was maybe preparing
me for a path I might pursue. n

aving seen two of my sons through the
Scripps National Spelling Bee, we are
very proud of them, and we are happy
to support them in whatever they try
to pursue.
Jairam saw his older brother work hard and win
the trophy, and he just loved it; he felt really inspired
to do this.
We were elated and ecstatic when Sriram won the
National Bee last year. It was a long time coming
— it was a dream for Sriram to win the trophy some
day and we were happy to see it come true.
The wider response was overwhelming too.
Everybody was so supportive in the whole town of
Corning; they actually had a huge banner put up at
the entrance of the city that said ‘Hometown Hero
Sriram Hathwar.’
They kept it up for nearly for two months. And
right after he won, the local community held a
reception for him, and we had nearly 200 people
show up to show their support. It was really heartwarming for us.
Raising Sriram as a child, I knew that he had pretty
good spelling and language skills, and so when he
was in first grade, he saw the regional spelling bee at
the local school and said, ‘Mom I would like to try it
next year if I could.’
He was in Montessori at that time, and I
approached his middle school teacher to see if she
would take him on, just for him to watch the competition, so that in the coming years maybe he could
compete. And so, being in Montessori, they could
pretty much pursue whatever their interests were, so
he would sit and watch the other students, like the
fifth and sixth graders, try to do the spelling.
He decided that he would try it out as well, and so in
second grade he won the school level after beating out the
fifth and sixth graders at his school, and then went on to
the regional level, where he won as well, and went to the
national level in the second grade.
From then on, there was no turning back. He just kept
going each year, and he did better each time he went to
the nationals.
Initially, we were not aware of the format and the system.
But once he went to the national bee for the very first time,
he realized that it took several attempts for most spellers
before they won the trophy.
He saw that he would also have to keep trying to get to
the nationals for exposure and that having prior experience
matters. So he tried to go from one level to another; he tried
to get more word lists; eventually, he pretty much just went
through the dictionary.
There all the words are available, so there is no secret to
this. So going through the dictionary is exactly what he did
and I think that’s what helped him most.
Sriram’s curiosity and eagerness to learn new stuff — and
not necessarily only in spelling because he did excel in other
subjects as well — is a key aspect of his success. He placed
pretty good in the geography bee, winning his school level
four or five years in a row, and he has done math competitions and science competitions. So basically a thirst for
knowledge, any kind of knowledge, was the most important
thing.
He was also very happy to share his knowledge with all
his friends, so I think that is a big part of him and his learning too.
Sriram stayed driven and maintained a consistent

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

‘It was a dream
for him to win the
trophy some day’
involvement in spelling by being exposed to several different events and competitions for spelling, not just the
Scripps Spelling Bee but also the local South Asian Spelling
Bee and the North South Foundation’s, which happens in
the summer months.
Doing that kept him motivated over the summer, and
then once school started, he was also into music and sports
and excelled in all of those as well. I think it’s a combination
of all of this and constantly learning new things — if you
are in music you pick up new words there, if you are in
sports you pick up more words there, all of which help in
the spelling bee, so they’re all relevant to it.
One thing I think of when it comes to Sriram’s exceptional spelling skills and knowledge is that he was pretty good
with remembering Sanskrit verses, which I think really
helped to enhance his memory ability. Also I recall that
when he went to the nationals for the first time, he had gotten a perfect score in the written test to qualify, so from
back then itself I knew that this kid had the potential and
that if he pursued it, he could win the trophy. And he did it.
In the beginning, as far as our role as a family, I initially
would work with him. We would try to make word lists and
I would quiz him after I came home from work. We would
spend several hours each day starting in second grade, and

then pretty much until seventh grade when he
became more independent.
In eighth grade he was pretty much on his own: he
tried to review the lists himself over and over again.
But from second through seventh grade, I used to
work with him as far as quizzing and trying to create
word lists.
Sriram is, of course, very independent and determined. These things don’t come by force at all. You
cannot succeed at the spelling bee or for that matter
any competition if you are not motivated or self-driven. Parents can only play a supportive role — the
drive has to come from the child.
We are definitely very happy and proud of both
Sriram and Jairam, and we are happy that our
younger one could go as far as his brother, this time
being his first year on the national scene. He has a
couple of more chances, and we will definitely work
with him and support him in whatever way we can.
In the end, it’s up to them to decide if they want to
persevere to reach their goals.
For the future and as far as profession goes, Sriram
wants to pursue ophthalmology and he also had
some success in the Diamond Challenge business
competition. I don’t know if he is going to try to integrate both or pursue one over the other. Time will tell
I suppose, but I think the key is passion and perseverance in whatever he chooses.
Also important to note is that Sriram is just a good
kid. Even most recently, when he went to the Scripps
Spelling Bee last week (to see Jairam compete), I had
several parents come up to ask me if I was Sriram’s mom
and telling me what a sweet kid Sriram is.
They felt that their kid was not known to anybody and
still Sriram made them feel so special. He made sure to be
attentive when they came and asked him for an autograph
or phone number, and he told them, ‘Of course, I will do
that for you,’ and he would sit and chat with them for a little while to make them feel good.
So a lot of parents came up to me to tell me, ‘You have a
wonderful child.’ We know he is a good human being, and
it’s nice to hear that. There were several fourth and fifth
graders who were first timers, and they were asking him
how to prepare for the spelling bee, so he spent a lot of time
advising them on how to get through it, what he did, what
worked for him. That meant a lot to them I think.
Sriram also is definitely very supportive of his younger
brother’s accomplishments. He makes time for him as
much as he can. Of course being brothers, they do have
their moments, but for the most part they get along very
well, and Sriram helped Jairam with the regional spelling
bee, and then quizzed him on words on the road down to
DC for the nationals.
It’s a five-hour drive for us so here and there he would ask
him how to spell a word and he would give little tidbits
about the word, its roots, and other ways to remember it.
Our younger one definitely looks up to him, and in fact,
even on the day of the bee, he was like, ‘Wish me good luck,
brother, because I know you are awesome and I wish I
could do as well as you did.’ n
Dr Roopa Hathwar is an Internal Medicine Physician at
Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Corning, New York.
She spoke to Chaya Babu.

India Abroad June 19, 2015 M146

Presented by

INDIA ABROAD PERSON OF THE YEAR 2014

‘I was very impressed with his
maturity more than his win’
Dr Jagadeesh Hathwar
Father

S

riram put a lot of effort into winning the
spelling bee. He’s very intelligent and
showed a lot of interest in achieving this
goal; he practiced tirelessly and really took
it as a challenge. And with god’s grace, he had a
very good result. But either way, whether he had
won or lost, whatever he was bestowed with, we
would be happy with that.
It’s really just good to see a young student taking
on that much of a challenge. It took years for him
to get as far as he did, so I am very happy that it all
worked out for him.
The thing that actually amazed me was that he
did very well initially as a second grader. And then
in the third grade he made it to the semifinals at
the nationals. But I knew this kid was a champion
in the fourth grade because that was the time when
he didn’t even qualify to go from the regionals to
the nationals.
I thought, being in fourth grade, that was going
to be big blow to him because he went to the
nationals twice and to not make it there was a failure of sorts, but he really took that as a caterpillar,
to propel himself to a higher level, and then he
came back sixth in the nationals the next year, in
fifth grade.
But again he faced a setback when he was in sixth
grade because he didn’t qualify to go to the nationals again. Then in seventh grade, he came in third.
That is the heart of a champion, in my analysis.
Anybody can handle success; it’s easy to handle

success. But it takes a champion to handle failure.
He was a champion because he knew, better than
anybody I know, even in my professional career, to
cope with failure. He was already a champion in my
book, but he showed me that he had the inner
space to have resilience.
That’s not the story you get from a lot of other
champions. For most, the story is just moving forward, from 37 to 33 to 28 to 14 and then 5 and
then number one — not a rollercoaster. It’s that
rollercoaster that is harder to take. Sriram came out
on top after the rollercoaster. I was very impressed
with his maturity more than his win. That’s what
I’m most proud of.
He was never much of an emotional guy in the
sense that he doesn’t get carried away. He knows
when he has a role to play and a job to do while
maintaining an inner space — he kept a distance
between that role and himself, and that maturity
and wisdom increased as he grew up.
I was so happy to see that, to see him not get
caught up in the rollercoaster. People get depressed,
people get tired, people give up; but Sriram rose
after that with his inner poise. He kept growing,
and as parents that’s what you want to see in your
kids. Because in life, not everything will be a success – they should know how to handle failure too.
So to me, this kid is very strong that way, and it’s
something even I need to learn from him. n
Dr Jagadeesh Hathwar is a gastroenterologist at
Guthrie Medical Group, a non-profit physician-led
integrated health care delivery system.
He spoke to Chaya Babu.
COURTESY: THE HATHWARS

‘Sriram’s perseverance is what
makes me want to be like him’
Jairam Hathwar
Brother

S
Jairam Hathwar is comforted by his brother Sriram and
mother Roopa after he failed to spell “riegel” during the
semi-final round of the 88th annual Scripps National
Spelling Bee this year.
JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS

riram and I are very close. We
play basketball together and
do a lot of other activities
together. We would sometimes
study spelling together if he had
time; when he was studying for the
bees, I watched him more than I
helped him. He helped me if wasn’t
busy with other things.
What I look up to most in Sriram
is that he never gives up. Even
when he is trying for something for
a long time, he doesn’t give up. He’s
also smart, but his perseverance is
what makes me want to be like him.
I think we are more similar than

different. The fact that he doesn’t
stop trying when he has a goal in
mind is big reason I’m proud of
him and want to follow in his footsteps.
It was exciting to see him win the
spelling bee. It was a happy moment, especially because he worked
really hard and didn’t give up.
It was fun being in the spelling
bee myself, and I am happy with
how I did but I am going to try
again next year. It was almost less
nerve-wracking to be in it competing than to watch Sriram be in it.
When you’re on stage, and a word
comes up, you know if you know it
and are going to get it; when you’re
watching someone else, you don’t

know if they know it or not. That
part is really nerve-wracking. I
never knew if he was going to get a
word right, so I was really shocked
and excited when he won.
The advice Sriram gave me before
the spelling bee was to just relax,
try my best, and to also make sure
to have fun. It was really helpful.
Other kids at the bee also said he
was encouraging and nice.
I think Sriram will keep doing
well. n
Jairam Hathwar also competed
in the Scripps National Spelling Bee
this year and made it to the semi
finals.
He spoke to Chaya Babu.